I welcome the extension which has been brought about as a result of the submissions made by this Minister since he reactivated the disadvantaged areas scheme submission on coming back to office in 1987. I would like to congratulate all concerned since it was announced today that 96 per cent of the original submission has been found to be acceptable and the extension will go ahead once the Council of Ministers give their final approval.
It is the largest extension which has taken place in a disadvantaged areas scheme review. In previous extensions the average increase in land area nationally was 3 per cent. This one was 12 per cent going from 58 per cent to 72 per cent. That fourfold increase on the previous average increase in extensions is reflected in County Offaly. Prior to this submission only 6 per cent of County Offaly had been included in the less severely handicapped areas and 6 per cent as mountain sheep grazing area.
The proposals which now have been accepted by the Commission and about which an announcement will be made before the end of this week, shows that 72 per cent of Offaly will now be classified as less severely handicapped for the purposes of the scheme. This is a sixfold increase on the situation prior to this announcement. I would like to congratulate the Minister and give due recognition to the Department and the officials on the survey carried out which has brought about a significant improvement for Offaly.
My concern at the moment relates to the reclassification proposals. There is no doubt but that a very serious case can be made on behalf of those delineated district electoral divisions which border the Shannon valley which suffer from severe and extensive flooding. The Minister of State and the Minister know this from experience. This flooding got worse in the last decade with extensive flooding in 1980, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1989, 1990 and again in 1991. Unusually, in April this year, further flooding was apparent in that area.
Farmers with 45 to 50 acres tell me they stripped the callows in the Shannon Valley on 18-19 October last year and still cannot put cattle back on that land. Not only will the callows not be available for meadow this year, they are unlikely to be available even for grazing because of the damage caused by that extensive flooding. When these farmers in west Offaly look across the river to east Galway, Roscommon and Westmeath they see that under the proposals for reclassification in this submission, those areas will attain more severely handicapped status. This is illogical and untenable. The Department should recognise that in the 1985 submission 49 townlands in that Shannon Valley region were deemed less severely handicapped. The perception within the county, was that those areas were recognised as more disadvantaged than the rest of the County of Offaly. In the present submission there is a six fold increase in the land area included in the extension of less severely handicapped status, but we have only two DEDs, Hynes and Clonmacnoise, being proposed for severely handicapped status.
I contend the Department should take the clear, common sense position of providing that at the very least the 49 townlands in that west Offaly area which were less severely handicapped prior to this submission, are approved as severely handicapped under this proposal. Apart from that, under the five criteria and the 40 per cent average farm income, it is clear that all the townlands in those DEDs now are eligible for severely handicapped status. The Minister should do this before the Commission give their final approval to the reclassification proposals rather than wait for the appeal tribunal to adjudicate on these DEDs. There are other DEDs and townlands in west Offaly which are not immediately adjacent to the Shannon and which Teagasc officials would contend come within the severely handicapped status proposal.
I will conclude by mentioning that 430 farmers are involved in the west Offaly area, 171 farmers are involved in the five DEDs in the Sliabh Bloom area. Of the 4,200 herd in Offaly, as many as 3,000 will now come under the disadvantaged areas scheme as a result of this Minister's submission, but I suggest to the Minister that we deal with this anomaly in west Offaly and the whole Shannon Valley region and get those 600 farmers into the severely handicapped areas and let the appeals tribunal deal with any further reclassification proposals and extension from other areas not yet designated.
