The Dealer sees that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken unilateral action on the ‘National Question’.

Your eagle-eyed correspondent nearly choked on his Rice Krispies last Friday when he realised to his horror that the area moving from 250kg N/ha to 220kg N/ha on the EPA’s derogation map included half of south Fermanagh in Northern Ireland.

Now The Dealer accepts that southern dairy farmers need around 28,000ha of additional grazing ground as a consequence of the derogation cut; but surely, there can be no justification for just waltzing across the border and requisitioning this land from our neighbours.

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Were the unfortunate farmers in Fermanagh even aware that they were now subject to the derogation cut, The Dealer wonders?

It has been suggested that the error was due to the EPA concentrating on water catchment divisions rather than jurisdictional demarcations.