A dedicated budget separate from existing CAP and other farm schemes must be allocated to implement the nature restoration plan, both the ICMSA and INHFA have insisted.

In submissions on the draft plan, which had to be lodged with the Department of Housing this week, both farm organisations stressed that the nature restoration initiative had to be adequately funded.

The farm organisations also maintained that farmer involvement with the plan had to be voluntary, that the initiative should be implemented initially on publicly-owned lands, and that any programme could not result in further designations of private farmland.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Without a dedicated and secure budget, the plan must not proceed on private land,” warned INHFA vice-president John Joe Fitzgerald.

“The Nature Restoration Law will impose additional restrictions on farmers, requiring them to have regard for habitat maintenance and restoration as they carry out their day-to-day operations,” the INHFA representative said.

“This embeds another layer of regulation across normal farming activity and will impact how land is used, managed and developed,” he added. The ICMSA said funding for the plan had to be “ring-fenced” and “long-term” to secure farmer support.

“Plans and interventions need horizons of 10–25 years or ad infinitum to support succession planning and long-term engagement in nature restoration,” the ICMSA submission stated.

ICMSA deputy president Eamon Carroll maintained that any biodiversity solutions needed to be workable for farmers both economically and structurally.

The plan could potentially broaden farm income streams by giving farmers access to carbon/nature credits and ecosystem payments, Carroll pointed out.

These opportunities should be explored, he added.

Meanwhile, the deep involvement of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) with the plan was another issue of concern raised in an INHFA member-survey on the plan.

Close to 62% of the 384 respondents to the survey were unhappy that the NPWS will have primary responsibility for implementing the restoration plan, while also assessing whether the programme is meeting its objectives.