Since the Government closed Shannonbridge and Lanesborough peat power plants in the middle of the country, it has come to light that it has been importing woodchip from Brazil. As has been said already, it has been importing peat from Latvia and it also imported coal from Russia to keep the Tarbert plant going. Since Shannonbridge and Lanesborough were closed, the cost of electricity has gone up every day. A new compensation payment scheme for farmers - the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES - stipulates that if you cut turf on your land, your farm payments will be cut. How can the Government justify this, in light of the fact that we are all under the one sky whether we are in Brazil, China, Russia, Latvia or anywhere else? Are farmers going to be penalised for cutting turf on their land?

The Taoiseach to respond.

When is the Government going to call stop to this nonsense?

We are over time.

The people of Ireland, especially the people in rural Ireland, are really angry to think that the Government will try to stop or prevent them from cutting turf on their own lands.

ACRES, which has been raised here, is a hugely popular scheme with farmers. While we had a target of attracting 30,000 farmers into the scheme, it was oversubscribed and 46,000 farmers applied for it. Great work was done in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to be able to facilitate all of those applicants and meet the huge level of demand from farmers. I am not familiar with the specific points raised by the Deputy but I will look into them and come back to him specifically on peat.

It is oversubscribed. The Minister of State should not try to get people out of the scheme by saying that if they are cutting turf on their lands, their payments will be cut. That is very wrong.