I welcome the students from Ballyhaunis, Cloonfad, Garranlahan, Ballinlough and several areas in County Roscommon.

When the programme for Government was being put together there was great talk about a rural environment protection scheme, REPS, 2 scheme for farmers. A large part of the carbon budget was supposed to go towards that. I have talked to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine many a time about this. I have gone to marts when it has not been popular for Opposition Deputies to stand up and to agree with a new policy in the line of the new Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, the areas of natural constraint, ANC, policy or the new organic payment that is coming out.

The new agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, payment, however, appears to be a problem. Over the weekend I was inundated with calls from planners who were given a draft, had an information day and were told that would be it and that this is what we are going on. I will give the Taoiseach an example. If you did 2 ha in a riparian zone, you got €3,000. Lo and behold, all those planners who had done out the new plan for farmers, because they were trying to get ahead of the posse, ended up being told Friday evening, sorry but it is being cut to 1 ha at €1,530. I am not blaming the Minister for this, and we know the debacle that went on in forestry, but, funnily enough, the hierarchy in forestry seems to be the same hierarchy for this environmental scheme. There are two years to prepare for it at the moment. The generic land-mapping system is giving trouble. The whole basis of where we are going in this scheme is very hard for a smaller farmer on 30, 40 or 50 acres, whom the scheme should be targeted at to make sure we get as many people in as possible. I know there is talk of 30,000 people going into the scheme but, at the moment, unless, first of all, the final spec is given to planners, there will be a serious difficulty. I am not imagining this. I got it in the ear all weekend. Second, the deadline needs to be extended to at least the end of November. Third, we need to rejig whatever went out on Friday evening on the riparian zone. We also need to make the scheme more workable for the 30, 40 or 50 acre farmer. Will the Taoiseach, along with his Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, as a Government, make this as workable as we can for those smaller farmers and come clean to the planners who are at it at the moment? What has happened is that plans are done out already and now they have to be changed again since last Friday evening. When you ring Paddy and tell him he was getting €3,000 but now is getting €1,530, the Taoiseach knows what he will get on the phone from those planners. Will the Government look at this?

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. As he will know, the new ACRES is worth about €1.5 billion over five years, the largest ever and 50% higher than the amount for the previous scheme. The riparian scheme remains 2 ha for €3,000. That has not been cut or changed. It is important that clarity is out there.

I have just confirmed with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine that there is no change to that. It is a scheme that we want to see rolled out as quickly as possible. As the Deputy knows, about €1.5 billion has been retained from carbon tax revenues to fund and contribute to this ambitious agri-environmental scheme. We anticipate 50,000 participants, with a maximum payment of up to €10,500 for individual farmers. Under the next CAP programme, which starts in 2023, some €723 million of carbon tax funding has already been allocated to support sustainable farming practices through a flagship agri-environmental climate measure and there is a variety of other supports there.

We want to make the scheme as workable as possible but if there are issues with the roll-out of the scheme that Deputy Fitzmaurice feels need modification to make it more workable, I have no doubt that the Minister and the team in the Department will be more than willing to engage and respond. This is a very important scheme in the context of the overall agenda ahead. If we are to maintain food security and sustainable food production and meet our climate obligations, we need workable solutions. Farming is interested in workable solutions. We need to plant many more trees than we are currently planting. There are issues that we have to address in terms of the land use change and forestry chapter of the climate action plan. We want to create funding streams for farming and agriculture and to have sustainable food production.

Overall, I hear what the Deputy is saying but I want to assure him that we are up for making this as workable as possible. The Minister, Deputy McConalogue, is engaging in a process with the dairy sector under the chairmanship of Professor Gerry Boyle, the former director of Teagasc, and also involving Professor Thia Hennessy in University College Cork, to make sure we can have a workable model here.

I thank the Taoiseach for his response but I want to put it on record that last Friday evening planners got emails-----

What planners?

The planners are the people who prepare plans for farmers and the Department liaises with them. Last Friday evening they got emails stating that the riparian zone was being cut to 1 ha. I welcome what the Minister and the Taoiseach have said today to clarify that it is staying as it is, which will stop a lot of confusion.

The other issue that needs to be looked at is the fact that if a farmer has 100 or 120 acres, this is okay. However, for smaller farmers in the west of Ireland and many other parts of Ireland, it is more difficult. When those farmers were in the previous scheme - the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme - they might have received €3,500 or €4,000. They did not get the full scheme payment because they did not have enough area to do so, but some of those farmers are down on money with the new system. I ask for flexibility for that group of farmers.

Also, there is a thing in it that we never in our lives were told to do. There is a part in it whereby farmers will cut half of a field if there are rushes in it and leave the other half. For God's sake, something needs to change so that farmers can cut the full field of rushes.

I am not going to pretend I am the most knowledgeable on these matters but I actually watched a video the other night of a farmer who did just that. He had created bird cover and he said that the impact on the production side was positive and beneficial. We need to keep an open mind about how we use land into the future. We have to broaden our horizons too in some respects. The 20-acre and 30-acre farmers that Deputy Fitzmaurice is talking about could benefit a lot from this. We should look at ways to increase income streams around biodiversity, with farmers in that situation being guardians of our biodiversity-----

Snails.

Sorry? It is a serious matter. We have huge biodiversity loss in the country and we need to protect it. We need to create an income stream too and an incentive for farmers to help us to guard and protect our biodiversity. That is the point I am making. We are very open to trying to help and to being creative and innovative about it because that is the future.