The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) Environment Committee chair Paul O’Brien is calling for “a common sense approach” to be taken on the burning of green waste.
The final exemption for the on-farm burning of cut agricultural green waste is due to come to an end next week.
Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications Eamon Ryan recently ruled out the possibility of any further extension being granted, in response to a parliamentary question from Fianna Fáil TD Robert Troy.
“It has been well flagged with the sector that this is the final extension to an exemption that was originally intended to expire in 2015 under the regulations,” Minister Ryan said.
The extension, which was previously rolled over six times, was due to conclude on January 1 of this year.
However, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC) announced that there would be two further extensions in 2023.
There was an initial two-month burning period allowed up to March 1, while the second window, which began on September 1 will come to an end on Thursday, November 30.
The exemption only applies to waste generated on farms through the management and restoration of hedgerows; land clearance and maintenance; material arising from wind/storm damage; and pest-infected or diseased material requiring management.
Burning
The IFA Environment Committee chair is urging the government to consider a further extension allowing farmers to burn green waste.
“The weather conditions for the last couple of months have been horrendous as we know. It has affected farmers’ ability to be able to actually go onto land to gather up green waste and deal with it in an appropriate manner.
“What we don’t want is farmers going in on land in the next couple of days, when there’s probably an option to do this maybe later on into the winter and into the very early spring.
“The risk of compaction and a risk of doing more damage [to land] just to comply with the kind of dates deadline that has the ability to be moved,” O’Brien said.
He pointed to recent extensions which were granted for slurry spreading and changes to how farmyard manure is dealt with due to the weather.
“If you look at when the open period [for burning] started in September, we’ve had nothing only horrendous weather for the last three months. So the product that’s actually on the ground is very, very wet.
“It’s very questionable because it’s wet, whether it would actually physically burn in a meaningful manner,” O’Brien explained.
“What I’m looking for is flexibility and a common sense approach by the government this year, taking into account the very, very wet autumn that we’ve had,” he added.
Green waste
In September, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) wrote to farmers outlining the alternatives to burning agricultural green waste.
The suggestions included regular flailing of hedgerows, creating a nature pile and biodiversity habitats and fuel (woodchip) for off-farm energy generation.
The department noted that under the new Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Scheme (TAMS 3) grants can be provided to farmers for a wood/biomass drying shed and for power take-off (PTO)-driven wood/biomass chipper equipment.
However, O’Brien, who is contesting the IFA South Leinster Regional chair election, said this would not be a realistic option, given the current backlog in TAMS approvals.
“To give farmers the option of applying for TAMS when we’ve already about 8,000 applications in the backlog. I do not think that that is a solution at this particular moment in time,” he said.
Around 3,000 farmers apply annually to burn green waste on their farms and O’Brien said that the burning alternatives proposed by DAFM are “less than satisfactory”.
“Any of the solutions involve a considerable amount of money,” he said.
“This is the difficulty where farmers are seeing just another level of bureaucracy, another level of red tape, the bar’s getting higher and higher and higher, and it’s coming at an additional cost of their business,” O’Brien said.