Time to tame hogweed scourge

IT is shameful that the agri-industry is doing nothing to control the giant hogweed epidemic that is destroying our riverbanks and will do huge damage to our rural economy.

Already fishing tourists are being advised to avoid Ireland because our rivers are dangerous places and it is only a matter of time before farmers are being sued by people who have been burned by the weed. Giant hogweed is a poisonous invasive plant that can cause lifelong burns if its sap comes into contact with human skin. It colonises riverbanks, smothering all other vegetation and on many Munster rivers it is now out of control.

It is not a county council problem and it could and should be solved by farmers. If every farmer along a river course controlled it for three years and prevented it from seeding it could be brought under control and eventually eradicated. It should be a condition of the Single Farm Payment an/or REPS that a farmer control giant hogweed on his holding. The last government missed an opportunity when it “broadened” the REPS scheme to admit intensive farmers. Commercial farms where the riverbanks are abandoned as waste are the main source of the problem.

Many of these farms are now drawing multiple REPS payments so the cost of compliance should not be too much of a burden.

Indeed it is a reflection of the role played by the farm lobby during the Bertie-bubble that there are now many farms in REPS where the only wild thing left alive is the giant hogweed that infects the riverbanks. What are the Department of Agriculture and Teagasc doing?

We should cordially invite some decision makers from the European Union to come and walk our riverbanks to see the extent of the problem.

A good place to start would be the River Bride below Conna Village in east Cork. They might reflect on the irony that in a valley where nearly all wildlife has been sprayed and bulldozed to extinction, no one is bothered with the one truly toxic plant in our midst. There are no subsidies on riverbanks.

For health and safety reasons those same EU officials should stay well clear of the river because the Bride is rotten with giant hogweed.

Gerard Cashman

Conna

Co Cork