I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £1,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1985, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Agriculture, including certain services administered by that Office, and of the Irish Land Commission and for payment of certain subsidies and sundry grants-in-aid.
This token estimate is required in order to make adjustments to the allocations for certain subheads, including some grants-in-aid, and to provide for expenditure on schemes introduced to assist farmers affected by the bad summer weather. One of the main items being provided in this Supplementary Estimate is £3 million under subhead D.8 to meet the expenditure in this financial year on three new schemes designed to provide assistance to farmers with serious winter fodder problems.
When it became clear by early August that a serious problem was going to arise for many farmers in securing sufficient fodder for their stock this winter I arranged for the introduction of a winter fodder scheme. The object of the scheme was to induce farmers to make late cuts of silage to replace hay and silage lost as a result of the continuous rain. The scheme consisted of two elements. Firstly, farmers with not more than 30 cows or 50 cattle were eligible for a subsidy of £35 for a tonne of high nitrogen fertiliser spread by them on grassland by early September. Notwithstanding the early gloomy prognostications for this measure some 24,000 applications were received and the bulk of these have already been paid. We are providing £650,000 to cover these payments. There will be a small carry-over into the next financial year.
The second element was the provision of grants for first time silage making. Under this measure a subsidy of £4 per tonne, subject to a maximum of 50 tonnes per farm, is payable to applicants from farms where silage had not previously been made. The response to this part of the winter fodder scheme exceeded all expectations with some 33,000 farmers applying for the subsidy. The total cost will be about £6 million and it is expected that some £1.7 million will be paid out in this financial year. The balance of the payments will be made early in the new year.
Flooding in the River Shannon Valley caused the loss of all or a substantial part of winter fodder supplies on many farms. Under a special aid scheme for the farmers concerned a sum of £20 per livestock unit up to a maximum of 25 livestock units per farmer, that is, a maximum payment of £500, was made available to people mainly dependent on farming and with not more than 60 livestock units. Special arrangements were made for those who suffered crop losses from the flooding and they too could obtain payment of up to £500. Applications were received from just over 2,000 farmers. Processing of these is now well advanced and it is expected that most of them will be dealt with by 31 December. The Supplementary Estimate includes £650,000 in respect of this measure.
Of course, these schemes do not represent the totality of the measures which were introduced by the Government to assist farmers hit by the bad weather. There is also the countrywide feed voucher scheme providing assistance for farmers in difficulty to purchase winter feed. This scheme will be financed by some £13 million from the Exchequer and 125,000 tonnes of intervention grain at 75 per cent of the intervention price from the EC. We have received some 90,000 applications under this scheme.
Last week I announced that I would also be introducing a scheme which will provide a 5 per cent interest subsidy on lendings of £40 million for tillage farmers who were badly affected by the bad weather. The scheme will cover cereal and pea growers who have suffered serious income loss and also potato growers who have incurred major losses because of flooding — I want to stress that — potato growers who suffered losses because of flooding and not people who suffered losses as a result of something like potato blight. Furthermore, producers whose crops were seriously damaged by the freak hail storm last July will also be eligible for aid under this scheme. The subsidy will be paid on individual loans of up to £10,000 and will operate retrospectively to cover producers who have already sown winter cereals. Details of this scheme are still being worked out with the financial institutions.
Turning now to subhead M.3. the additional sum of £9.6 million is to meet the payment of livestock headage grants under the disadvantaged areas schemes to an extra 20,000 applicants this year compared to previous years. It seemed to me that we should do everything possible to bring forward the payment of headage grants in order to alleviate the effects of the bad weather. The combined efforts of the Department's field staff and local office personnel have resulted in a record number of headage payments being processed this year and, in fact, some 90 per cent of applicants under the 1985 disadvantaged areas schemes will be paid before Christmas. The staff concerned, indoor and outdoor, are to be congratulated on the tremendous efforts they have made to bring forward these payments which resulted from carrying out inspections.
We have also accelerated non-vote payments of EC premium grants. Under the 1985 suckler cow premium scheme, we have brought forward by five months payments to some 43,000 applicants who will get over £7 million before the end of 1985. Under the 1985 ewe premium we succeeded recently in having the EC Commission fix an early advance and as a result some 17,000 applicants in the disadvantaged areas will be paid about £5 million by the end of the year. All in all, between the disadvantaged areas schemes and the EC premium schemes, an extra £22 million in grants will be paid by the end of this year as compared with last year. This makes a very substantial contribution to farmers' income and enables them to purchase winter feed. In particular, these arrangements should assist the majority of farmers with beef cows in the disadvantaged areas to retain their breeding stock over the winter and to qualify for the £70 beef cow grant next year as announced in the national plan.
Under subhead D. 2 £1.4 million extra is provided in respect of payments under the calved heifer scheme. This scheme ran for the three years 1982 to 1984 and resulted in an increase of 88,000 cows in the national herd. The original provision, of £3.5 million for 1985 was intended to cover residual payments that would arise this year. However, participation in the scheme in 1984 turned out to be higher than we had allowed for at the time the 1985 Estimate was finalised. Total residual payments this year will, in fact, amount to £4.9 million and, as a result, an additional £1.4 million is now required.
Additional sums totalling £2.781 million are being provided under subheads A.1, B.3 and B.12 to cover the cost of pay increases, mainly under the 24th round, for staff of the Department and of An Foras Talúntais and ACOT.
Under subhead G.2 an additional sum of £336,000 is provided in respect of redundancy payments to 17 former employees of the statutory body, the Pigs and Bacon Commission, who were wound up in mid-1983. These employees had been taken on by the industry-funded Pigs and Bacon Commission Limited when they commenced trading in August 1983. The company ceased operations at the end of 1984. My Department had liability for redundancy payments to these employees and the additional sum of £336,000 sought is for this purpose.
Subhead M.5 covers losses arising on market intervention operations. The original Estimate for this heading was £1.45 million and the new provision is £3.336 million. The additional £1.886 million is required mainly to cover the cost to be borne by the Exchequer arising from the Commission's refusal to finance refunds on exports of certain dairy products by An Bord Bainne to third countries in 1981. The question at issue is whether the export clearance of these products should have been carried out at the Irish ports or at a port of trans-shipment in another member state. We are satisfied that export clearance at the Irish ports was in accordance with the arrangements approved by the Commission and that the refunds were properly payable to the board. We have, accordingly, commenced legal proceedings in the European Court against the Commission. In the meantime, however, the sum of about £2.28 million involved has to be paid to the Commission.
The total of the additional amounts being provided in the Supplementary Estimate is £19 million. This is being covered by corresponding savings on subhead M.4: Market Intervention — Incidental Expenses. The amount voted for this subhead in 1985 was some £97 million but substantial savings have arisen because of lower levels of intervention stocks than had been anticipated and also because of lower interest charges than had been allowed for in respect of borrowings for the purchase of intervention products.
I commend the adoption of this Supplementary Estimate to the House.
