Debate contribution: The draft Farming with Nature Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2025
Debate contribution by Mr Declan McAleer on .
- MLA
- Mr Declan McAleer
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 19 May 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Executive Committee Business
- Heading
- The draft Farming with Nature Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2025
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4968892
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Minister for coming to the Chamber on the matter of the SR on the Farming with Nature scheme. As Robbie said, we have considered this in Committee and had written and oral briefings on it. Sinn Féin supports its objective of increasing the extent of habitats on farmland through schemes such as increasing the number of habitats, protecting watercourses, creating nature corridors and increasing sequestration. We recognise that it is important to have a successor to the environmental farming scheme, and I recall that, at the outset, when this came up for discussion, the Department said that it would look at what was good and not so good about previous environmental schemes and pick the best bits to create this one. We welcome the fact that it was co-designed in partnership with the APSG and the Farming with Nature co-design group that was established in June 2024. We highlighted a number of issues in Committee, however, and I would appreciate it, if the Minister would address them in his response today. The Minister has indicated that there will be a cap on this, but we do not know what it is. There are farmers who welcome the fact that the scheme is coming in but recognise that it will be funded from a cut to their single farm payment, so that is obviously a concern. Farmers are also anxious that payments may go exclusively to landowners — people who do not produce food or farm the land — so perhaps the Minister could address that in his response. We also posed questions. How does the scheme interface with other schemes? For example, tree planting is part of Farming with Nature, but how does that interface with the woodland grant schemes and the other schemes that the Forest Service has brought out? How does it interface with the farm sustainability payment, given that the application window is not aligned with the farm sustainability payment deadline? The correspondence says that all actions must be completed by the end of March 2026. I presume that it will be autumn before applications can be made, so actions will have to be completed within five or six months, which will be challenging. Whilst that may be the planting season for hedges, it is not a good time of year to be fencing. This is the time of year that you want to be fencing along rivers, for example, rather than in the dead of winter, when it is wet. Reference has been made to phases. Am I right in saying that you can choose one of the phases and that there is not a fixed succession, so that you can go into phase 1, 2 or 3? Finally, our briefing note mentioned third-party landscape project coordinators in phase 2, so I would be grateful for a wee bit of information about who those project coordinators might be. Are they groups? Are they organisations? How will they be appointed by the Department, and how will they work with clusters of farmers? I welcome the SR. We support it, and I thank the Minister for coming here today.
524 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.02 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.96).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.02 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.02 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.02 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.02 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.96 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.02 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.93 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.04 |
| Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty | 0.02 |
| Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations | 0.01 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:38 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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