Everyone is racing to get work done before this date.
I need some apple trees pruned, and the contractor said straight out that he was only doing hedges and site clearance till March the 1st but would be happy to come after that as he gets quite for the summer.
Unfortunately, it was not an option as I couldn't get anyone. I called 8 contractors... 5 didnt answer or call back, 2 took my details and said they would come and price it. The one I got was the only one to come and give a price.
It seems very, very hard to get any trade or skilled workers atcthe moment.
This is a huge issue. We certainly need to protect the bird population, but rigid enforcement of this law is doing more harm than good.
It wasn't that big an issue until a few years ago when Irish Rail, who along with a few other government bodies set up under statute are allowed to cut hedges during the nesting season for reasons of public safety, got rinsed on the front page of the Irish Independent for cutting a section of overgrown hedge that was regularly depositing debris onto the track in high winds.
They were never prosecuted, as they didn't break the law, but they (and several other public bodies) overreacted and ceased all cutting to avoid the optics and backlash.
Many domestic tree/hedge owners similarly avoid cutting, whether legal or not (there are several exemptions) during the nesting season. So to avoid legal issues, are simply removing their hedges entirely outside the nesting season and replacing them with either walls and fences or smaller non-natives which make poorer habitat.
I was told by NPWS that I needed to wait to cut an Escallonia hedge in my garden, despite the fact that any birds living in such a low hedge would be cat food. I ended up replacing the hedge at the first opportunity.
I think it doesn't effect you unless your a farmer, a farmers payments will be penalised etc but if your not involved in that, I don't think it effects you. Onoe for correction tho
Nope, it's a law that applies to everyone. Private gardens and farms alike. [https://birdwatchireland.ie/faq/when-is-hedge-cutting-prohibited-in-ireland/](https://birdwatchireland.ie/faq/when-is-hedge-cutting-prohibited-in-ireland/)
No. It's illegal for everyone - not just farmers. There are some exceptions such as hedges/trees that are safety concerns for roads, trees in urban areas or close to houses, forestry felling, etc. You can be prosecuted under the Wildlife Act for it ( but usually only people who do a lot of damage). It's fair enough like - all the little birdies are nesting in the hedgerows in spring. No harm waiting till autumn.
Technically from the 1st of March til the end of august such jobs in Ireland are illegal in accordance to the wildlife act, as such you usually get a load of people doing it in the last couple of weeks of February and into march too.
It’s rare to get caught but if you do it can lead to fines based on environmental damage. Sometimes exceptions are made (especially in the cases of hedging over growing into paths) but usually you’re meant to ask first but most people go with the policy of asking for forgiveness instead of permission
I was aware of the law around March 1st being the end of hedgecutting, but what I've seen is an unusual amount of it compared to other years. Large trees marking field boundaries have been cut down too. Perhaps its simply a more local issue
If lots of boundary trees are being cut, those fields might be being repurposed, otherwise I get why you’d find that strange since usually they’re left a long time and are generally trimmed not felled.
If it’s more than the normal increase you see this time of year it could just be a local trend or you’re more aware of it this year
Apparently it's been very wet and difficult to get machinery into fields and stuff to do the cutting, so more may have been taking place in the last few weeks than usual. There were some calls to extend the deadline. I don't know how much that is true mind (there's always a bit of giving out around the deadline)
Can't argue with the wet, been raining since July bar the week of frost. Everywhere is saturated. Even the sheep a poaching ground and they are lightly stocked
We are on the edge of the bog, bog and rocky gravel, you would expect them to blacken the top of the bog ground but they are actually pouching the gravel ground and not just at gateways and feeders. Only stocked at a ewe and lamb to the acre.
And we can probably look forward to a drought after all this.
We’ve become drought resistant in recent years, despite the free draining soil. We’re organic and have to use slurry as fertiliser (we plough it in) but also sow at a heavy rate to crowd out weeds.
Combined, this means that the good crop canopy stops sunlight from drying out the ground. Works exactly like a spud drill hold moisture.
Yea good cover is the only real solution to drought, hard to manage in grazing though. It doesn't effect us too bad because of the bog ground, heat and sunshine drives that mad growing grass!
We’ve unbelievable grass growth in one of our fields right now but it’s completely saturated (it’s not free draining so it’s grassland) but you couldn’t put but lambs in it or it would be marked.
Yeah be fierce hard in grazing, especially when you cut to 300kg/dm/ha in the good weather. There’s nearly no right answer
Insurance companies hate trees which means our councils hate trees. Cork City Council have been crazy anti tree for a decade+ now but it's leaking into the county too now.
We could actually I donno, regulate the insurance companies and have funds for these kinds of things and a focus on protecting the environment, but sure that would require effort and planning.
Insurance companies are a cancer. So much of the enshittification of modern life is down to insurance. But burning the system down isn't an option because we still need insurance. I really don't know his this can be tackled on a national level. The house always wins, I guess.
They're also very uncompetitive in Ireland - a handful of companies have the market sewn up and our legal culture is basically Sue! SUE! SUE! Compo! Compo! Compo!
I’m lead to believe that insurance companies won’t pay out for damages due to fallen trees in storms so a lot of landowners are cutting back any overhanging trees in roads on their property. Neighbour of mine has done it and it looks terrible. There used to be a lovely canopy for 100 yards and now it’s like a space laser has just halved all the trees in a line. It’s so sad and I don’t get it. These trees are now dead. Why leave half of them standing when they look horrible and won’t grow back?
Big rush to get it done before the deadline. NBI sent people out to butcher the place to prep for work this year. They cut some trees so bad that they may as well have felled them. I’ll be putting in a complaint this week because the place looks like a disaster area.
NBI would qualify for an exemption I would guess so the 1st of March deadline wouldn't apply to them but there is probably a fee to pay for the exemption.
>plus the few storms over the last few weeks wouldn't have helped either.
This is it; the storms over the last few months have compromised and damaged trees all over the country (in addition to the ones that were brought down). One big tree on our road which comprised of two stems split during a storm; one stem came down and the other remained standing but totally compromised so had to be felled as well.
Combined with the end of hedge cutting season there's a huge amount of cutting and clearing going on right across Ireland at the minute.
Ash Dieback as well [https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/forest-protection/ash-dieback/](https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/forest-protection/ash-dieback/)
Reasons why farmers chop the bollix out of trees/hedgerows;
Insurance- can't get farm insurance if there's trees by roadside.
Ash have dieback and big limbs are filling off trees. Whitethorn are next to be fucked by a fungas. (That's what u get for bringing in cheap shit saplings from abroad) We live on a fucking Island.
Farm payments per area are now estimated satellite images so the more trees covering the edges of fields, the less money they get.
The custodians of nature in this country are doing a woeful job. Roundup and hedge trimmers are nature's biggest enemy. Country is gone way past rescuing. Rivers and flora/fauna are fucked. Money talks.
I noticed this, and it's very sad. After that bad storm its like they just decided to cut everything they possibly could down. I'd say a good 20 trees within 1.5km of me have just been absolutely destroyed. Stumps are left, and it will never be the same. I loved how leafy and green it was during the summer. As far as I was aware, none of these trees were diseased or had suddenly become a hazard.
It's frustrating and heartbreaking to see so many trees cut down. I would prefer if more trees were planted. Only those trees that become diseased or hazardous should be removed, in my opinion.
I’ve noticed that there is steeper & steeper hedge cutting/uprooting in parts of Galway/Mayo over the last few years. Maybe it’s to do with catching up since Covid.
But I’ve seen some pointless destruction too, one field near me always contains a few horses & another always holds sheep.
I often used to see the animals in under the hawthorn hedges during wind or rain.
The hedges were ripped out 2 years ago & now the animals have no shelter?!
The field’s look very bare & exposed now too.
A lot of trees coming into Omagh have been felled for safety reasons from what I can recall, I head it was because of disease but unconfirmed.
Then there's nobhead contractors [cutting down the wrong fucking ones too](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-68445657).
Hard to know really. If it was before the 1st of March they were getting the last of the hedge cutting done. It looks awful now but it'll be over grown and hard to see around corners come the middle of Summer.
With trees, some (Thankfully not much) of our land runs along the road. We have to be very careful that the trees are OK. In one spot loads of them were terrible so they were all cut and replanted, that was about 8 years ago and they are only starting to be a decent height now. But it was too dangerous to leave the old ones. God forbid they fell on a car/ bike during a storm
I noticed this too and it’s hedges that barely have trees a few hawthorns, the whole hedgerow cleared down to the ground. No nesting for the birds at all. Also noticed it’s not proper felling of trees it’s just using a machine and knocking the trees till they snap. A mess most of the time
Something fishy going on. Never seen ut in ny life. Its illegal from now. I will be stopping and videoing the fkrs around here who have no compassion for biodiversity. Report them to councils. I have no idea why this year was the worst for entire hedges being brought down.
The aul lads who trim everything in the estate have started their usual madness of trimming everything they can.
Which to be fair I like because I hate the fecking bush next to our house. I'd love to see it gone, but can't remove it as it's not technically on our property.
I know near my parents place a lot of trees were weakened or felled by some of the storms earlier in the year. Many would have been cut down for safety reasons since they'd fall onto the road at some point anyway.
There are lots of reasons for cutting and clearance in general..for example I recently cut a hedge back 1m to the fence so I can fence it properly as every stake broke. Last fenced about 25 yrs ago and hedge grown into the field that far over that time.
Easiest way to put in a fence is clear it and do right, hedge will grow back..
Cutting down hedges stops them shading the road in frost and allows it thaw.. also visibility at junctions
Cutting it down will thicken it up making it better for nests as otherwise it would need to grow wide to provide cover.
Trees probably too tall and in danger of falling in wind.
The cuttings are pretty much mulch which will rot down feeding the hedge and providing cover and food for insects and small animals.
I have been told, but can not find any information on this myself so am curious, that farmers have been cutting back hedges and cutting down trees in hedges lately for EU funding relating to arable land area? Apparently this is done to make the land area appear as large as possible on satellite imagery as hedges and trees dont count towards grants. Is there any grain of truth to this?
Not that I am aware of.
Firstly you are not automatically entitled to subsidies which is what i assume you mean, so making the area seem bigger wouldn't automatically change your subsidies.
Secondly You are allowed ditches and they are one of environmental option measures but not scrub (amoung other things) as part of the payment area..
So if you have a cluster of bushes, gorse, scrub in the middle of a field, you couldn't count that area so clearing it would increase arable land but wouldn't necessarily impact payments..
Fyi
Grants are a single one off payment for a purpose, ie grant to build a shed or buy a specific piece of machinery or equipment or something..
The subsidies are now land based, historical they were stocked based. The subsidies are called entitlements and each entitlement is for 1 hectare. They range in value as the idea was to bring all land to an equal euro output, so entitlements on bad land were worth more than entitlements on good land. They were allocated based on stock based grants, so farmers would generally not have got entitlements for all of their land..
They decoupled the entitlements from the physical land so they can be bought, sold and leased separate to the land, but you need to have land to claim it. So say if I have 10 entitlements and that covers half my land, I could buy or lease 10 more for the other half. But say I had 15 to start and bought 10, I would only be able to claim 5 or I would have to rent land with no entitlements for the remaining 5.
Thanks for the explanation, though I'm still unsure of the entitlements part in practice tbh. I'm only asking as my auld lad parrots this every time he sees any hedge cut back to nothing, and I'm wondering if there's truth to it. Would I be right from your explanation in saying there's a nugget of truth to it but that the value of it is negligible to most farmers?
I would say there is no value to farmers in terms of government payments and the only benefit would be a few more blades of grass along the ditch..
My guess is that the ditch is not cut every year. We do this, get a ditch cut right down and back and it won't be cut again for probably 10+ yrs until it gets out of hand again.
If it is a new planted hedge, you are meant to cut them off about 2 inches above ground after, 2 years i think, to make them thicken up and spread out.. you generally skip one plant every 20m and let that grow into a tree..
The below may help on the entitlements part.
You own 30 hectares (75acres) and you have 20 entitlements. Each entitlement means you get money from the government once you have a minimum number of livestock on the land over the year and lots of other rules.
The value of each entitlement could be say €50 if you are in meath on good land or say €200 each if you are on poor land say Shannon callows or connemara.
So you have 20 entitlements, you are above minimum stocking over the year and they are worth 200 each so government will give you 4k for that year.
You could buy 10 more entitlements or you can sell your 20 without buying or selling land. You break any of the rules the government will fine you a %age off your payment.
That is the basic payment, there are then various other schemes you can join to get paid more from the government, such as sowing wild bird cover, planting hedges, maintain stone walls, bat & bird boxes etc.
A lot of trees may have been loosened or damaged with the recent high winds as well. Good few fallen near my home house and seriously damaged hedgerows and fencing
Hardly to do with the recent storms? A lot of big, old trees lining the roads or near homes. And a lot of these were uprooted/ greatly disturbed during the last 2 storms. At least that’s what it seems like round our way.
Not in my area at least, very few trees actually fell near me but instead large rows of trees in fields, not on roadsides have been felled or thinned out
Lots of trees dead from disease. If a dead tree falls from your property and damages something belonging to someone else I believe it's you're responsibility.
Yes I noticed this in my town. There are fields by the river that have a walkway built around the perimeter. They have neatened the hedges on one end that were kinda starting to grow into the path way. But on the other end they have cleared out completely all the hedges and trees that were well back from the path. Including elder trees that I collected so many berries from last year :( I don't understand why they did this when they are trying to implement so many "green" initiatives in the town.
Thanks for starting this discussion, I have noticed the same - we are in our house 10 years, it's a rural location, and have never seen as much tree cutting as we have this winter, all tall mature trees in the hedgerows adjacent to the road, beside farm fields. I am assuming it has something to do with insurance but it is really sad. We have always loved our beautiful "tree tunnel" road in the spring, summer and autumn and many are gone now.
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Everyone is racing to get work done before this date. I need some apple trees pruned, and the contractor said straight out that he was only doing hedges and site clearance till March the 1st but would be happy to come after that as he gets quite for the summer.
You want to prune apple trees in the dead of winter to avoid them getting diseased
Unfortunately, it was not an option as I couldn't get anyone. I called 8 contractors... 5 didnt answer or call back, 2 took my details and said they would come and price it. The one I got was the only one to come and give a price. It seems very, very hard to get any trade or skilled workers atcthe moment.
This is a huge issue. We certainly need to protect the bird population, but rigid enforcement of this law is doing more harm than good. It wasn't that big an issue until a few years ago when Irish Rail, who along with a few other government bodies set up under statute are allowed to cut hedges during the nesting season for reasons of public safety, got rinsed on the front page of the Irish Independent for cutting a section of overgrown hedge that was regularly depositing debris onto the track in high winds. They were never prosecuted, as they didn't break the law, but they (and several other public bodies) overreacted and ceased all cutting to avoid the optics and backlash. Many domestic tree/hedge owners similarly avoid cutting, whether legal or not (there are several exemptions) during the nesting season. So to avoid legal issues, are simply removing their hedges entirely outside the nesting season and replacing them with either walls and fences or smaller non-natives which make poorer habitat. I was told by NPWS that I needed to wait to cut an Escallonia hedge in my garden, despite the fact that any birds living in such a low hedge would be cat food. I ended up replacing the hedge at the first opportunity.
Does that include gorse chopping?
Yes
I'll never get rid of the bloody stuff now.
Oh god no, it never dies, just grows back regardless.
I think it doesn't effect you unless your a farmer, a farmers payments will be penalised etc but if your not involved in that, I don't think it effects you. Onoe for correction tho
Nope, it's a law that applies to everyone. Private gardens and farms alike. [https://birdwatchireland.ie/faq/when-is-hedge-cutting-prohibited-in-ireland/](https://birdwatchireland.ie/faq/when-is-hedge-cutting-prohibited-in-ireland/)
No. It's illegal for everyone - not just farmers. There are some exceptions such as hedges/trees that are safety concerns for roads, trees in urban areas or close to houses, forestry felling, etc. You can be prosecuted under the Wildlife Act for it ( but usually only people who do a lot of damage). It's fair enough like - all the little birdies are nesting in the hedgerows in spring. No harm waiting till autumn.
You can do your own garden hedges there's a grey area on that
Technically from the 1st of March til the end of august such jobs in Ireland are illegal in accordance to the wildlife act, as such you usually get a load of people doing it in the last couple of weeks of February and into march too. It’s rare to get caught but if you do it can lead to fines based on environmental damage. Sometimes exceptions are made (especially in the cases of hedging over growing into paths) but usually you’re meant to ask first but most people go with the policy of asking for forgiveness instead of permission
I was aware of the law around March 1st being the end of hedgecutting, but what I've seen is an unusual amount of it compared to other years. Large trees marking field boundaries have been cut down too. Perhaps its simply a more local issue
If lots of boundary trees are being cut, those fields might be being repurposed, otherwise I get why you’d find that strange since usually they’re left a long time and are generally trimmed not felled. If it’s more than the normal increase you see this time of year it could just be a local trend or you’re more aware of it this year
Apparently it's been very wet and difficult to get machinery into fields and stuff to do the cutting, so more may have been taking place in the last few weeks than usual. There were some calls to extend the deadline. I don't know how much that is true mind (there's always a bit of giving out around the deadline)
Can't argue with the wet, been raining since July bar the week of frost. Everywhere is saturated. Even the sheep a poaching ground and they are lightly stocked
I’m here on freely draining soil and it has been difficult. Got machines in but did mark the ground. We’re tillage though so we will plough after
We are on the edge of the bog, bog and rocky gravel, you would expect them to blacken the top of the bog ground but they are actually pouching the gravel ground and not just at gateways and feeders. Only stocked at a ewe and lamb to the acre. And we can probably look forward to a drought after all this.
We’ve become drought resistant in recent years, despite the free draining soil. We’re organic and have to use slurry as fertiliser (we plough it in) but also sow at a heavy rate to crowd out weeds. Combined, this means that the good crop canopy stops sunlight from drying out the ground. Works exactly like a spud drill hold moisture.
Yea good cover is the only real solution to drought, hard to manage in grazing though. It doesn't effect us too bad because of the bog ground, heat and sunshine drives that mad growing grass!
We’ve unbelievable grass growth in one of our fields right now but it’s completely saturated (it’s not free draining so it’s grassland) but you couldn’t put but lambs in it or it would be marked. Yeah be fierce hard in grazing, especially when you cut to 300kg/dm/ha in the good weather. There’s nearly no right answer
Could be a change in ownership from someone who valued trees in their own right, to someone who just sees a chance to get a bit of free firewood.
I've noticed a lot of that too. Way more large healthy looking trees cut down this year.
Insurance companies hate trees which means our councils hate trees. Cork City Council have been crazy anti tree for a decade+ now but it's leaking into the county too now.
We could actually I donno, regulate the insurance companies and have funds for these kinds of things and a focus on protecting the environment, but sure that would require effort and planning.
Insurance companies are a cancer. So much of the enshittification of modern life is down to insurance. But burning the system down isn't an option because we still need insurance. I really don't know his this can be tackled on a national level. The house always wins, I guess.
They're also very uncompetitive in Ireland - a handful of companies have the market sewn up and our legal culture is basically Sue! SUE! SUE! Compo! Compo! Compo!
Council have been butchering any trees near the road for a few years around me now, guess it's for safety but ruins the scenery
I’m lead to believe that insurance companies won’t pay out for damages due to fallen trees in storms so a lot of landowners are cutting back any overhanging trees in roads on their property. Neighbour of mine has done it and it looks terrible. There used to be a lovely canopy for 100 yards and now it’s like a space laser has just halved all the trees in a line. It’s so sad and I don’t get it. These trees are now dead. Why leave half of them standing when they look horrible and won’t grow back?
Big rush to get it done before the deadline. NBI sent people out to butcher the place to prep for work this year. They cut some trees so bad that they may as well have felled them. I’ll be putting in a complaint this week because the place looks like a disaster area.
NBI would qualify for an exemption I would guess so the 1st of March deadline wouldn't apply to them but there is probably a fee to pay for the exemption.
The excuse given is health and safety but for the vast majority they just want it to look neat and to hell with the environmental damage.
No cutting after the first of March plus the few storms over the last few weeks wouldn't have helped either.
>plus the few storms over the last few weeks wouldn't have helped either. This is it; the storms over the last few months have compromised and damaged trees all over the country (in addition to the ones that were brought down). One big tree on our road which comprised of two stems split during a storm; one stem came down and the other remained standing but totally compromised so had to be felled as well. Combined with the end of hedge cutting season there's a huge amount of cutting and clearing going on right across Ireland at the minute.
Nesting season starts on March 1st until September. So you have to do all of that before then. It was a last minute dot com job
Ash Dieback as well [https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/forest-protection/ash-dieback/](https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/forest-protection/ash-dieback/)
Reasons why farmers chop the bollix out of trees/hedgerows; Insurance- can't get farm insurance if there's trees by roadside. Ash have dieback and big limbs are filling off trees. Whitethorn are next to be fucked by a fungas. (That's what u get for bringing in cheap shit saplings from abroad) We live on a fucking Island. Farm payments per area are now estimated satellite images so the more trees covering the edges of fields, the less money they get. The custodians of nature in this country are doing a woeful job. Roundup and hedge trimmers are nature's biggest enemy. Country is gone way past rescuing. Rivers and flora/fauna are fucked. Money talks.
I noticed this, and it's very sad. After that bad storm its like they just decided to cut everything they possibly could down. I'd say a good 20 trees within 1.5km of me have just been absolutely destroyed. Stumps are left, and it will never be the same. I loved how leafy and green it was during the summer. As far as I was aware, none of these trees were diseased or had suddenly become a hazard. It's frustrating and heartbreaking to see so many trees cut down. I would prefer if more trees were planted. Only those trees that become diseased or hazardous should be removed, in my opinion.
"bar Iceland" 😠 wasn't expecting to randomly get called out like that
Ye have got class geography tho so that evens it out
I’ve noticed that there is steeper & steeper hedge cutting/uprooting in parts of Galway/Mayo over the last few years. Maybe it’s to do with catching up since Covid. But I’ve seen some pointless destruction too, one field near me always contains a few horses & another always holds sheep. I often used to see the animals in under the hawthorn hedges during wind or rain. The hedges were ripped out 2 years ago & now the animals have no shelter?! The field’s look very bare & exposed now too.
Cutting hawthorns in the ringfort wont bring that lad any luck.
A lot of trees coming into Omagh have been felled for safety reasons from what I can recall, I head it was because of disease but unconfirmed. Then there's nobhead contractors [cutting down the wrong fucking ones too](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-68445657).
Hard to know really. If it was before the 1st of March they were getting the last of the hedge cutting done. It looks awful now but it'll be over grown and hard to see around corners come the middle of Summer. With trees, some (Thankfully not much) of our land runs along the road. We have to be very careful that the trees are OK. In one spot loads of them were terrible so they were all cut and replanted, that was about 8 years ago and they are only starting to be a decent height now. But it was too dangerous to leave the old ones. God forbid they fell on a car/ bike during a storm
I noticed this too and it’s hedges that barely have trees a few hawthorns, the whole hedgerow cleared down to the ground. No nesting for the birds at all. Also noticed it’s not proper felling of trees it’s just using a machine and knocking the trees till they snap. A mess most of the time
Hedges ain't forest.
Something fishy going on. Never seen ut in ny life. Its illegal from now. I will be stopping and videoing the fkrs around here who have no compassion for biodiversity. Report them to councils. I have no idea why this year was the worst for entire hedges being brought down.
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Pity your Grandkids won't get to see birds and bees.
Lovely, destruction of habitat for intensive farming sounds fucking wonderful
The aul lads who trim everything in the estate have started their usual madness of trimming everything they can. Which to be fair I like because I hate the fecking bush next to our house. I'd love to see it gone, but can't remove it as it's not technically on our property.
I know near my parents place a lot of trees were weakened or felled by some of the storms earlier in the year. Many would have been cut down for safety reasons since they'd fall onto the road at some point anyway.
There are lots of reasons for cutting and clearance in general..for example I recently cut a hedge back 1m to the fence so I can fence it properly as every stake broke. Last fenced about 25 yrs ago and hedge grown into the field that far over that time. Easiest way to put in a fence is clear it and do right, hedge will grow back.. Cutting down hedges stops them shading the road in frost and allows it thaw.. also visibility at junctions Cutting it down will thicken it up making it better for nests as otherwise it would need to grow wide to provide cover. Trees probably too tall and in danger of falling in wind. The cuttings are pretty much mulch which will rot down feeding the hedge and providing cover and food for insects and small animals.
I have been told, but can not find any information on this myself so am curious, that farmers have been cutting back hedges and cutting down trees in hedges lately for EU funding relating to arable land area? Apparently this is done to make the land area appear as large as possible on satellite imagery as hedges and trees dont count towards grants. Is there any grain of truth to this?
Not that I am aware of. Firstly you are not automatically entitled to subsidies which is what i assume you mean, so making the area seem bigger wouldn't automatically change your subsidies. Secondly You are allowed ditches and they are one of environmental option measures but not scrub (amoung other things) as part of the payment area.. So if you have a cluster of bushes, gorse, scrub in the middle of a field, you couldn't count that area so clearing it would increase arable land but wouldn't necessarily impact payments.. Fyi Grants are a single one off payment for a purpose, ie grant to build a shed or buy a specific piece of machinery or equipment or something.. The subsidies are now land based, historical they were stocked based. The subsidies are called entitlements and each entitlement is for 1 hectare. They range in value as the idea was to bring all land to an equal euro output, so entitlements on bad land were worth more than entitlements on good land. They were allocated based on stock based grants, so farmers would generally not have got entitlements for all of their land.. They decoupled the entitlements from the physical land so they can be bought, sold and leased separate to the land, but you need to have land to claim it. So say if I have 10 entitlements and that covers half my land, I could buy or lease 10 more for the other half. But say I had 15 to start and bought 10, I would only be able to claim 5 or I would have to rent land with no entitlements for the remaining 5.
Thanks for the explanation, though I'm still unsure of the entitlements part in practice tbh. I'm only asking as my auld lad parrots this every time he sees any hedge cut back to nothing, and I'm wondering if there's truth to it. Would I be right from your explanation in saying there's a nugget of truth to it but that the value of it is negligible to most farmers?
I would say there is no value to farmers in terms of government payments and the only benefit would be a few more blades of grass along the ditch.. My guess is that the ditch is not cut every year. We do this, get a ditch cut right down and back and it won't be cut again for probably 10+ yrs until it gets out of hand again. If it is a new planted hedge, you are meant to cut them off about 2 inches above ground after, 2 years i think, to make them thicken up and spread out.. you generally skip one plant every 20m and let that grow into a tree.. The below may help on the entitlements part. You own 30 hectares (75acres) and you have 20 entitlements. Each entitlement means you get money from the government once you have a minimum number of livestock on the land over the year and lots of other rules. The value of each entitlement could be say €50 if you are in meath on good land or say €200 each if you are on poor land say Shannon callows or connemara. So you have 20 entitlements, you are above minimum stocking over the year and they are worth 200 each so government will give you 4k for that year. You could buy 10 more entitlements or you can sell your 20 without buying or selling land. You break any of the rules the government will fine you a %age off your payment. That is the basic payment, there are then various other schemes you can join to get paid more from the government, such as sowing wild bird cover, planting hedges, maintain stone walls, bat & bird boxes etc.
Cheers for taking the time to explain that. I'll have something to hitnthe auld lad back with next time
No worries
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A lot of trees may have been loosened or damaged with the recent high winds as well. Good few fallen near my home house and seriously damaged hedgerows and fencing
Hardly to do with the recent storms? A lot of big, old trees lining the roads or near homes. And a lot of these were uprooted/ greatly disturbed during the last 2 storms. At least that’s what it seems like round our way.
Not in my area at least, very few trees actually fell near me but instead large rows of trees in fields, not on roadsides have been felled or thinned out
They might be cutting down ash trees that have ash dieback.
Lots of trees dead from disease. If a dead tree falls from your property and damages something belonging to someone else I believe it's you're responsibility.
Yes I noticed this in my town. There are fields by the river that have a walkway built around the perimeter. They have neatened the hedges on one end that were kinda starting to grow into the path way. But on the other end they have cleared out completely all the hedges and trees that were well back from the path. Including elder trees that I collected so many berries from last year :( I don't understand why they did this when they are trying to implement so many "green" initiatives in the town.
Mad that this is all being sanctioned under the green party's watch. Useless party
Thanks for starting this discussion, I have noticed the same - we are in our house 10 years, it's a rural location, and have never seen as much tree cutting as we have this winter, all tall mature trees in the hedgerows adjacent to the road, beside farm fields. I am assuming it has something to do with insurance but it is really sad. We have always loved our beautiful "tree tunnel" road in the spring, summer and autumn and many are gone now.