New peatland rules won't impact farmers - minister

Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon does not see the new GAEC 2 rules on peatlands impacting farmers in their day-to-day work.

The 2025 Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) opened last week with two new conditionality standards which are termed social conditionality and GAEC 2: the protection of wetland and peatlands.

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal at last week’s Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) AGM, the Minister said that this new standard was a legal requirement and had to be implemented this year.

Fines

Irish taxpayers and farmers will avoid a fine of €100m following the introduction of new drainage rules this year, he added.

“We had to make a submission to the European Commission, they are now considering it and hopefully they will come back very quickly. We had a derogation in 2023 and 2024 - all other EU countries have made a submission on this so we are lone standing here,” he said.

“You can continue to plough this ground, you can continue to reseed, you can do routine maintenance of existing drains, new drainage is allowed in line with existing national planning provisions.

This is an intervention that allows us to meet our requirements under GAEC 2 as part of the CAP strategic plan to avoid those fines but also to make sure that farmers’ activity continues,” he said.

Minister Heydon added that the inspection rate will be really low and that he doesn’t see farmers falling foul of the regulations.

“The inspection rate will be low at just 1% which will be done online.

“I don’t see people falling foul of this. This is a conditional element that is part of the CAP strategic plan that we had to implement and I’m quite satisfied that what is in this will not impact farmers day-to-day who are farming on that land,” he said.

The Department of Agriculture has told the Irish Farmers Journal that the area for GAEC 2 parcels is estimated to be about 650,000ha, and that will include about 570,000ha of peatland. About a quarter of farmers (35,000) will have some land parcels subject to the GAEC 2 standard, it said. The standard is subject to final approval by the Commission.