The House will now hear two minute statements on matters appropriate to the Minister for Agriculture and Food. I propose to call the Deputies I have selected in the following order: Deputy Therese Ahearn, Deputy Deasy, Deputy Hogan, Deputy Flanagan and Deputy D'Arcy, Each Deputy is entitled to two minutes in respect of each matter and each of the statements will be followed immediately by a two minute reply from the Minister for Agriculture and Food. However, as the matters raised by Deputy Ahearn and Deputy Deasy are similar, it is proposed that both Deputies will make their statements and the Minister will reply to both Deputies thereafter. Similarly as the matters raised by Deputy Hogan and Deputy Flanagan are similar I propose that both these Deputies will make their statements and the Minister will reply to both Deputies thereafter.
Adjournment Debate. - Agriculture and Food Matters.
A Cheann Comhairle, I thank you for allowing me raise this urgent and pressing matter. The enormous delay in the payment of headage premiums in 1991 to over 90,000 farmers is totally unacceptable. In fact, I consider it nothing short of arrogance on the part of the Government not only to delay the payments but to assume that the farming community can be treated in such an offhand and uncaring manner.
The Government's action is causing not only annoyance and frustration among farmers but severe hardship and stress at a time when agricultural incomes are at such an alarmingly low level that many farmers are finding it very difficult to survive. These payments are, I stress, a lifeline to many farmers to take them through the winter months when income from all other sources has ceased. These payments will make the difference between survival and decline in their livlihoods. I wonder if the Department really appreciate that headage and other premium payments are such an important part of farmers' incomes. In spite of the protest by the IFA in Castlebar, the Minister for Agriculture and Food could not give a commitment that all headage premiums would be paid before Christmas. I believe that the commitment given by the Taoiseach, Deputy Haughty, to the IFA president, Mr. Alan Gillis, earlier this year that all payments would be made in 1991 should be fulfilled. I want to impress on the Minister that no farmer can afford to wait, he needs a 100 per cent pay out of what is due to him.
I wish to ask the Minister to state when headage payments increases will be announced and whether the Department will change the administrative procedures for headage and other premium schemes. The present procedure is cumbersome and difficult. In fact its only notable characteristic is that it causes farmers to make mistakes in completing the form. Surely a more simple and less complicated procedure is possible. An extraordinary number of farmers has lost out on premium and headage payments due to errors in completing the application forms and as a result has been denied payments. I appeal to the Minister to take urgent action to ensure that all headage payments will be made. The money is owed to the farmers, all I am asking is that the Minister pays up.
As Deputy Ahearn has stated, 90,000 farmers are affected, and because of the chronic income crisis in farming they really need the headage payments immediately.
The sum of £200 million which is involved is made up of headage payments for the disadvantaged areas, and premiums in respect of beef and suckler cows. There is some prospect, I believe, that the bulk of the headage payments will be made by the end of this year but we are asking that the total amount be paid because of the incomes crisis in farming. Bank managers and business people in general are crying out for payment and the financial institutions are putting undue pressure on quite a number of farmers. There is something in the region of £100 million outstanding in headage payments, £12 million of which is an additional payment agreed under the Programme for Economic and Social Progress but we have no details as of yet as to how that money will be distributed. A further £80 million is due in special beef and sucklet cow premiums, none of which has been paid to date and the indications are that very little of it will be paid in the current year. In actual fact a category of farmer who is particularly badly off is the small dairy farmer who is entitled to a special suckler cow premium as his milk quota is under 12,800 gallons per annum. This category of farmer have not been paid their premium payments for 1990, let alone 1991. They have a particular problem.
In addition sheep farmers, who have been recently reclassified and fall within the disadvantaged areas scheme, have been promised that they will be paid a particular element of the ewe premium but to date it has not been paid and some 7,000 farmers are affected.
Let me thank Deputies Ahearn and Deasy for raising this matter. I propose to take the issues raised by both Deputies together.
There is no particular delay in the payment of headage grants this year. In fact so far this year £176 million has been paid out on livestock headage grants in 1991. It is anticipated that another £88 million will be paid out before the end of the year bringing the total to £264 million. The vast bulk of the remaining payments to be made will be headage payments totalling about £63 million under the disadvantaged areas cattle, sheep, equines and goat headage schemes, about £21 million under the suckler cow premium scheme and £4 million under the special beef premium scheme.
As in previous years, some 70 per cent of all grants due under the disadvantaged areas schemes will be paid in the calendar year to which those schemes refer. The farmers in our disadvantaged areas, therefore, will receive the same proportion of grants as they have always received. I assure both Deputies that in the new year every effort will be made to pay all remaining grants as quickly as possible. In addition, we have managed to bring forward from January 1992 to mid-November 1991 the payment of £32 million under the ewe premium scheme following our request to the EC for such earlier payment.
The House will now hear a two minute statement from Deputy Hogan.
I wish to raise the need to carry out surveys as soon as possible into the submissions made by many groups throughout the country to the Department of Agriculture and Food and the appeals tribunal in respect of disadvantaged areas. I hasten to add that the issue of disadvantaged areas is probably one of the greatest political footballs in our political history. It could have been used and could still be used as a bargaining point in the negotiations in Brussels but the Government, the Minister, and certainly the previous Minister, did not have the will or the political commitment to take the issue on board.
I have been informed that it will take 220 inspectors three months at a rate of four farms per day to carry out the work on the submissions received by the appeals tribunal. I was informed, and it was confirmed to Deputy Yates recently in the House, that the surveys would not commence until 1992 in March or April.
That amounts to another broken promise by the Government. I welcome the fact that we have a new Minister for Agriculture and Food and I hope that when he makes a commitment he will stick to it, that his word will be his bond unlike the previous Minister, particularly in relation to the issue of disadvantaged areas.
Hear, hear.
There is a possibility that no survey work will be completed for another 12 months. Basically, what the Government want is to get another general election out of the issue of the disadvantaged areas scheme by making farmers all kinds of false promises in the lead-up to that election. That is unacceptable to me and it is unacceptable to Fine Gael.
I now call on Deputy Charles Flanagan to make his two minute statement.
We are dealing with the greatest political football since the promise made by the Fianna Fáil Government of the thirties to drain the Shannon. The survey on disadvantaged areas status was a false promise and will go down as such in the folklore of Irish agriculture.
The new Minister for Agriculture and Food should make sufficient resources available to allow the survey be undertaken without delay. In the light of the farm income crisis, not only in counties Laois and Offaly but throughout the country, the commitment made by the Minister's predecessor, now Minister for Labour, at the first meeting of the appeals panel that all necessary resources would be made available for the carrying out of a 100 per cent survey now rings very hollow indeed.
On 5 November in the House the Minister stated that the survey would not begin until next March or April. That is not good enough. The delay is completely unacceptable at a time when farm incomes have been slashed.
As the Minister of State is aware, designation is the only way of surviving at present. I note that the appeals panel will meet on Friday next to discuss the matter of funding and, in view of the huge volume of applications received so far by the Department, it is necessary that those resources be made available to allow the field officers undertake the survey without further delay.
In view of the fact that the benefits are available primarily from the European Community, it seems ridiculous that the matter should go on and on with little or no progress being made to date. I trust that the new Minister will undertake this task immediately or else resign.
I am pleased that this matter has been raised by Deputies Hogan and Flanagan. I am pleased there is an appeals procedure in place and I am hopeful that in the area I know best he will do substantially better than we did in the survey and designation that has been carried out.
The Minister of State promised it often enough during the local elections.
While I appreciate the Deputies' concern in the matter, I must point out that there has been a massive response to date from appeals applicants seeking inclusion under this scheme. In fact, about 40,000 farmers have sought inclusion.
There has been no response from the Minister.
The Department have a mammoth task in carrying out the surveys and in the subsequent processing of the data at a time when there are many other demands on resources.
In the past few weeks the Department have been examining other less expensive options, including the possibility of obtaining survey data from the CSO, who carried out a survey of all farms as recently as last June. It has now been ascertained, however, that the required information will not be available from the CSO in time or in the detailed form required and that the necessary details can be acquired only through further inspections by departmental staff. We will, therefore, be going ahead with arrangements for the carrying out of inspections of the 40,000 farms seeking inclusion as soon as possible. Those inspections are expected to begin next month or early in the new year.
The House will now hear a two minute statement from Deputy Michael D'Arcy.
Thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for giving me permission to raise this issue. It has come to my attention that a percentage of farmers are being penalised for providing incorrect information on their application forms under the beef premium scheme. In many cases although the incorrect information may apply to only one or two beasts in a herd of 30 or 40 the whole herd is deemed ineligible, not just for the 1991 scheme but also for the 1992 scheme. In some cases the mistake may have been a genuine one.
The percentage of herds deemed ineligible for one reason or another is, I understand, running at between 10 per cent and 12 per cent in County Wexford, and the same percentage applies right across the country.
The punishment certainly does not fit the crime. In one case a farmer applied for the male animals in his herd and entered a tag number from a card which related to a male. However, when the Department's inspector checked the herd that animal was found to be a female. As a result the farmer was disqualified from all grants for two years although the mistake was made by a Department inspector in the first instance. No one is infallible. I am sure the Minister is aware that when one is reading cattle tags it is very difficult to spend time checking ears for marks of one sort or another, particularly if the cattle are very excitable — some continental cattle breeds are very excitable and their tags are very difficult to read.
I accept that the regulations are made at EC level and that the scheme is completely funded by the EC. The Minister should put a case to the EC for the farmers of Ireland asking that some discretion be used at national level with regard to this year's applications.
I would appreciate if the Minister would see to it that applicants deemed ineligible are paid for animals identified correctly on the application forms, especially in view of the conditions that prevail this year. This was referred to previously by the Minister of State and other speakers.
I should like to point out to the Minster of State that all ear tags are now computerised and nobody can defraud the Department in that respect. The Minister, as a farmer, will understand that by and large when cattle are being tested one can expect defects to the tune of about 8 per cent. The Minister's Department consistently make mistakes yet the farmers are penalised. The amount of time being spent by district veterinary officers and farmers in trying to sort out these problems is incredible, and I appeal to the Minister to change the regulation.
The position in relation to the beef premium scheme is that last year the EC Commissioners allowed, at our request, a great deal of flexibility under the scheme as it was the first year in which on-farm inspections did not take place in all cases. As a result of this, a great many 1990 scheme applicants were paid the special beef premium who would otherwise not have been paid for that year at all.
In allowing this flexibility, however, the EC Commission insisted that from 1991 onwards all applicants in Ireland must fully comply with all the regulations governing the scheme. Despite warnings issued to this year's applicants, I am sorry to say that some continued to make the same mistakes as last year, for example, by applying on female animals, or on animals whose identity cards had already been marked to show that they had already received the premium. As a result, my Department had no choice but to apply the appropriate penalties laid down by the EC.
Having checked this with the appropriate section in the Department I should say that, where mistakes were made without fraudulent intent and where there is reasonable explanation for such mistakes, the Department are making every effort to treat each case with flexibility and understanding because it appears that some of the penalties laid down by the EC are too severe. In fact the Department have taken up this matter with the Commission.
I want to assure Deputy D'Arcy that we will continue to press the European Community and that every effort will be made to achieve a satisfactory outcome to this problem.