Unless a lack of funding is addressed, an ambitious EU plan to restore natural habitats will fail, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
The European Commission had instructed that 20% of all land and sea be designated for nature restoration by 2030.
However it has not ring-fenced additional funding to achieve those targets.
The Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action is exploring the Nature Restoration Law, which is being introduced in Ireland to implement the commission’s regulation.
Farmers warned that a restoration designation meant “dramatically reducing the value of that land”.
Paul O’Brien of the Irish Farmers Association said that farmers needed “the financial tools” required to prevent their income being “destroyed”.
They can experience a devaluation of “up to 90% overnight”, Tadhg Buckley of the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers’ Association said.
“There’d be uproar” if this happened in a housing estate, he told the committee.
“We cannot look at CAP [the Common Agricultural Policy] to fund this,” he warned, noting that previous attempts at “repurposing CAP” were akin to the “loaves and fishes”, with a fixed sum used to cover increasing costs.
If there was to be farmer buy-in, participation “has to be on a voluntary basis”, Mr Buckely said, and the programme must be “properly funded”.
President of the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers’ Association, Vincent Roddy, said that a previous programme to protect forests “has been a very bad experience for most landowners”.
He said that a review of the EU’s Natura 2000 scheme revealed that it was worth around €3bn a year, which worked out at €3,000 a hectare, while farmers “at best got €242 a hectare”.
Mr Roddy said that he knew a landowner who was offered €467 for designated land by the Government, which – if not designated – would “get multiples of that”, up to €20,000 an acre.
“This is about trust. Farmers don’t trust politicians”, nor do they trust the Government to support them, he said.
