Farmers might have been irked by the news that a new potential fine awaits.

My news desk colleague Noel Bardon broke the story that proposed legislation covering a register for chemical fertiliser will contain a €5,000 fine for farmers who fail to comply with the terms of the new regime.

However, they should pause for thought, because the new register will actually be a force for good, if a pain in terms of being another layer of paperwork.

As one of the 70,000 or so part-time farmers in the country, I struggle at times to keep the paperwork in order. Getting the job done, particularly when so many jobs are both time-sensitive and weather-dependent, is a struggle in itself.

Getting the paperwork surrounding that job completed is often left until late at night. Quite often it gets left until the next day, which in reality could be the following week.

In that regard, the good news for farmers is that the burden for keeping the fertiliser register primarily falls on the agri-merchants and co-ops who sell fertiliser, rather than the farmers who buy it.

Unique number

Farmers will be required to supply the unique number they will be given when they register as buyers of fertiliser. After that, probably it’s a matter of keeping all the dockets in a box.

Of course, fertiliser usage will have to be monitored to ensure the nitrates regulations aren’t breached.

Buying huge quantities of fertiliser won’t be a breach of the regulations, as long as all purchases are properly documented.

If a farmer was to form the view that fertiliser will become more expensive and more difficult to source in future years, there’s nothing to stop them filling the yard or shed with fertiliser. However, they will have to account for the use of any fertiliser purchased. It will either have to be in stock or applied in accordance with the usage limits already in place under the nitrates regulations.

But here’s the thing - it’s bad farming to breach the nitrates regulations.

We are now in a very different place than when the first nitrates regulations were first introduced.

Dick Roche became a bogeyman for farmers when he signed the ministerial order enacting that first iteration.

Farmers were unhappy at the limits allowed for certain crops, and at the new storage requirements for slurry and dung.

The Farm Waste Management Scheme addressed the slurry storage requirements, although they have become more onerous under the latest (fifth) version of the nitrates regulations.

In the meantime, concerns around fertiliser limits for various crops have been addressed. At this point, few farmers can claim that they are unfairly constrained by current fertiliser limits.

So apart from the inconvenience of the paperwork, there is little to grumble about in terms of the new fertiliser register.

If there are farmers in breach of the current guidelines, they are no help to the rest of us.

The quality of our groundwater and our rivers can only be compromised by overuse of fertiliser.

Border concerns

However, this being Ireland, there is always a catch. The catch in this case is the border.

There is a genuine fear that undocumented chemical fertiliser will cross the border from Northern Ireland, creating a “black market” among farmers who want to cloak their true fertiliser usage.

There’s little use in padlocking the front door if the back door is swinging open

Brexit being the gift that keeps on giving, there is no imperative from Brussels for a parallel fertiliser register in Northern Ireland.

There are already concerns around organic fertiliser crossing the border. Pig manure, poultry litter, and digestate from anaerobic digesters in Northern Ireland are moving south.

Some of this movement is well documented and all in keeping with both EU and UK regulations. Some of it, however, is not.

Last year, an Irish Farmers Journal investigation raised serious question marks around the control of veterinary antibiotics in Northern Ireland.

There’s little use in padlocking the front door if the back door is swinging open.

There is one question farmers can legitimately ask. Why is there a need to assign a new number to all fertiliser users?

Every farmer in the country who completes a Basic Payment Scheme application or who keeps livestock has a herd number.

Why not use this for the fertiliser register as well, and compel the few farmers who don’t already have a herd number to apply for one?

It would be one less thing for us all to have to remember.

Needs must

Speaking of questions people can legitimately ask, there must be a couple of recent agriculture ministers wondering exactly where the line is regarding ministerial conduct. And perhaps a former European Commissioner.

That does not excuse the judgement lapse of Dara Calleary and Phil Hogan in relation to their attendance of golfgate. And no one can excuse incurring a driving ban for drink driving, whatever the circumstances.

Robert Troy on the left of this picture at the 2011 Mullingar Show, with Michael Hughes (ISA), then-Minister Willie Penrose, and then-Bishop of Meath Dr Michael Smith.

But there are surely raised eyebrows at the fulsome support from all sides for Robert Troy, currently embroiled in issues surrounding his failure to properly complete his returns to the Standards in Public Office.

Troy is the Minister of State at the Department of Trade, Enterprise and Employment.

More troubling for Taoiseach Micheál Martin, his party leader, and for Tánaist Leo Varadkar, his senior minister, his special responsibilities include trade promotion, digital and company regulation.

Few TDs should have more regard for fully and properly completing the SIPO forms.

Does any of this undermine his capacity to do his job?

There are responsibilities he holds that the opposition may well make hay with.

In May, for instance, he launched a public consultation on disclosure of income tax information law changes.

His defence is that he misunderstood the requirements of the declaration process.

His detractors will say he could and should have engaged the services of someone who understood the exact requirements.

Many farmers have found out the hard way that not understanding the exact requirements of the many forms they have to fill is not an acceptable excuse.

Breaches of the new fertiliser register will bring penalties.

Bad luck

The revelation that the former Bord Pleanála deputy chair Paul Hyde was involved in determining a planning issue that granted permission for two houses to be built in the garden of a property he co-owned is not good news for the Longford-Westmeath TD, or indeed the Government.

It’s also being reported that this property was not disclosed on the Residential Property Price Register.

Mr Hyde resigned a month ago having been the subject of an internal investigation, which now has escalated and is in the hands of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

There is no suggestion that Hyde’s involvement in this saga is anything more than coincidence, but it doesn’t help Robert Troy’s case.

None of these things in isolation might sound like a resigning or sacking offence, but any politician will tell you that you have to quickly get out from under a story like this, or it will scupper your career.

At this stage, the Robert Troy saga is displaying three of the traits that spell danger.

Firstly, errors of omission - the original incomplete disclosures to SIPO.

Then, a clarification that leaves loose threads, missing the best opportunity to put the story to bed.

Finally, rank bad luck - Paul Hyde’s involvement.

And Cowen and Calleary might be forgiven for wondering what would have happened if the current delicate mathematics of the Government had been in place two years ago.

Right now, we effectively have a minority government, dependent on either two Green Party TDs from whom the whip has been removed or independent TDs broadly supportive of Government policy for support on an issue-by-issue, vote-by-vote basis.

The Government needs Robert Troy right now, but it’s an undeniable fact that this Government has utterly failed to arrest the worsening housing crisis.

It has spread far past Dublin, into small towns all over the country.

Any negative publicity around property dealings is extremely damaging.

The revelations of recent days will cause real electoral damage if the Government should fall anytime in the next six months.

It looks on Sunday morning (21 July) that Robert Troy’s bacon might be saved by the number of other TDs who have moved to correct the record of their own SIPO disclosures.

No less than a dozen current TDs have amended the record at some point.

Among them was Danny Healy-Rae who forgot 15.3ha of farmland (described as 38 acres).

His brother Michael omitted his directorship of the filling station in Kilgarvan.

Fellow Independent TD Richard O’Donoghue left out a much smaller piece of farmland - 1.02ha (2.5acres).

Richard Bruton also forgot to include farmland he owned back in 2014, when he was a cabinet minister.

Green Party TD Brian Leddin forgot a house he owns and lets out in Limerick.

His party colleague Ossian Smith, a minister of state like Troy, omitted the ownership of an admittedly inactive company

All these disclosures were voluntary. There could be as many or more who have previously failed to make full disclosures but have decided to brazen it out, because SIPO has no investigative powers.

I’m hardly the only farmer who feels it’s time that changed.

And also thinking that the Department of Agriculture should second some of their inspectorate to have a look at what is happening in Leinster House, literally on the doorstep of Ag House.

And perhaps include some sanctions for non-disclosure, for none are currently in place.

Otherwise, with breaches of the fertiliser register potentially incurring a €5,000 fine, it starts to look like one rule for us, and another for them.