Vol. 407 No. 1
162 Mr. Crowley asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if he will outline (1) the criteria used by the Milk Quota Appeals Tribunal, (2) the number of applicants assessed and (3) the number of people who got additional quotas who had under (a) 5,000 gallons, (b) 10,000 gallons, (c) 15,000 gallons, (d) 20,000 gallons and (e) 30,000 gallons.
The milk quota appeals tribunal considered applications for additional milk quota from producers who met the following criteria: (i) producers whose milk production in the 1983 milk quota reference year was affected by animal disease problems, brucellosis, leukosis or bovine tuberculosis, in the period 1978 to 1983; (ii) producers who adopted development plans under the farm modernisation scheme in the period 1981 to 1984 and whose permanent quotas were between 12,800 and 20,000 gallons and (iii) other producers whose milk production in 1983 was adversely affected by exceptional circumstances causing severe hardship.
In assessing the claims of producers who met those criteria, the tribunal gave priority, in general, to small-scale producers and to producers who had not benefited previously from quota allocations from a national reserve.
Some 5,000 applications were assessed by the tribunal. The number of applicants who were allocated additional quota is 1,480. A breakdown of the quota gallonages of the successful applicants as requested by the Deputy is not readily available. However, all of the successful producers had quotas under 30,000 gallons.
