Over 400 farmers packed into the Hudson Bay Hotel in Athlone last week, to hear from IFA and the top brass in the Department of Agriculture on GAEC 2, rewetting and ACRES developments. There is no doubt the Department officials left with a clear sense of farmer frustration, unease and fear.

Rewetting is without doubt, potentially, the most debilitating of the three land use issues discussed. The Department was keen to point out any rewetting was going to be “voluntary and compensated”. The farmers were equally keen to point out that voluntary is impossible to guarantee and any compensation would be temporary for a permanent land use change. Farmers have lost confidence in the officials before the game has started. They hear of closed-door meetings without farmers, two year delays in ACRES payments, and farmers not knowing if they have land impacted by recent CAP changes.

Farmer after farmer stood up and said how can rewetting be ‘voluntary’ if my neighbour on the bounds’ ditch is blocking up drains? Similarly, Miriam Gunn from Roscommon IFA asked: “If you now need planning permission to open a drain do you need planning permission to block a drain?” Another farmer piped up that river management is not happening and many are already in an undesignated rewetting scheme. All real, rational and excellent points, and the top table had no answers. We heard all the usual lines – “food production has to be a primary goal, CAP payments will not be affected, and compensation will be forthcoming”.

The Department can’t take all the heat. It implements policy. The reality is EU policy is forcing a decline in food production. The value of CAP has been eroded with every new policy round. While short-term compensation might well be available, it won’t be able to compensate for a decline in long-term asset value or the removal of future land use options.

So what do we know on rewetting? We are in mid-March 2025, the Department is developing a plan, there is no detail to discuss and there is no money on the table. The Department’s stated intention is to rewet 10,000ha of drained farmland in 2025 and 80,000ha by 2030. It all seems haphazard, late in the day, unrealistic and highly disrespectful to farm families.

On GAEC 2 – the new CAP conditionality measure kicking in this year, Department official Michael Moloney confirmed at the meeting farmers could now check and see if they had GAEC 2 land. Darren Carty explains how to check on page 71.

Again, the fear of the unknown on GAEC 2 land management and the start of what some term relatively minor initial restrictions on ploughing and draining, will undoubtedly be ‘toughened up’ in future CAP policies. Again, local pre-election promises and European promises that every revamped CAP was going to have less red tape have already failed to materialise. Are farmers supposed to just suck it up?

As Laois farmer Henry Burns said, farmers want to be positive and progressive, but keep getting pulled back. Department Chief Inspector Bill Callanan said they want to provide other land use opportunities for some farmers. Farmers counter by saying if existing CAP funds are being redirected, then all we are doing is moving the same money around and forcing in new rules. Europe is producing less and less food. The moral obligation to produce food and optimise the assets we have in this country continues to slide down the value scale.

Finally, the ACRES money mess will live long in the memory. There are 10,000-plus farm families still waiting on payments. One in four of these are waiting two years for year one balancing payments. These farm families would have been depending on this money to pay college fees, pay fuel bills, etc. It remains under lock and key, tied up in Department bureaucracy.

The Department seems to be caught between a rock and hard place. It just shows that even with all the IT capacity and excellent people available, the level of detail is so intricate, it is just not possible to deliver. It should force a serious rethink. Farmers are bearing the brunt of this. Already it is a disgrace. Accepting that not all is the Department’s fault, the majority is. Broken promises live long in the memory.