asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if he has any plans to assist farmers with milk quotas of less than 25,000 gallons to become entitled to increase their quotas.
118.
Written Answers. - Milk Quotas.
117.
asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if he will introduce restrictions to prevent any additional milk quotas being given to farmers who already have milk quotas of more than 25,000 gallons.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 117 and 118 together.
I have from the beginning of my term of office been very concerned about the quota difficulties of small scale producers and consequently the changes I have made in the operation of the quota system have been designed to direct any available quota towards such producers.
The initial arrangements for the distribution of our national quota in 1984 were not, unfortunately, adequate to deal with the difficulties faced by these producers. For that reason I secured agreement from the Council of Ministers in 1987 to introduce a restructuring scheme giving special priority for the purchase of quota, without land, to small scale producers. I laid down that the scheme would, in fact, be restricted to producers with quotas under 50,000 gallons and of these the first priority category is confined to producers with quotas of less than 30,000 gallons.
I have also sought to help these producers by giving them priority under the scheme for temporary leasing of quotas introduced in 1988-89 and also in that year I further amended the guidelines on flexi-milk in their favour.
Furthermore, I introduced in December 1987 a clawback system under which a percentage of quota transferring with a lease of land will be retained in a national reserve, if the lessee's total quota exceeds 50,000 gallons. This is designed partly to add quota to the national reserve for distribution to small scale and young farmers and, more importantly in the way the scheme works, to give such producers priority access to quotas becoming available for leasing with land.
More recently, in response to a request which I made at last year's EC price fixing negotiations the Commission has introduced a proposal to provide for an additional one per cent of quota to be made available to member states for allocation to priority category producers, e.g. small scale producers and new entrants. These proposals are before the Council of Ministers at present and I am hopeful that a decision will be taken by the Council at an early date.
119.
asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the number of farmers who have milk quotas of (a) over 100,000 gallons, (b) between 50,000 and 100,000 gallons, (c) between 20,000 and 50,000 gallons and (d) less than 20,000 gallons.
The quota system in Ireland is operated on a purchaser, i.e. co-operative or dairy basis. Quota details of individual producers are not held by my Department. I do not, therefore, have the breakdown requested by the Deputy.
However, I understand that a study carried out by Teagasc in 1986 shows that the number of herds producing over 80,000 gallons each per year was 1,034, those producing between 40,000 and 80,000 each was 5,130, those producing between 20,000 and 40,000 each was 10,804 and those producing less than 20,000 each was 38,319.