I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this issue. It is very difficult to understand the logic of this decision. In announcing the suspension of the scheme the Minister said that the scheme would be restored post-Maastricht in the allocation of new Structural Funds. We are told in the context of the Maastricht debate to vote "yes" and that these funds will definitely be available. If that is the reality I fail to understand why the rural environment and rural employment prospects should be jeopardised in the interim by suspending the operation of this scheme.
If unemployment is the biggest single problem confronting the country and if the tourist industry, through the exploitation of our green and unspoilt environment, offers one of the major solutions to this problem, then the decision of the Government to suspend the operation of this scheme to control farmyard pollution is doubly confusing. It is evidence that the Government are turning their back on small farming enterprises by putting the capacity to rectify pollution problems beyond their control and ensuring a continuation and an acceleration of the already unacceptable trend towards fewer and bigger farm holdings.
The net effect of the Government's decision is that thousands of jobs will be lost in the construction industry and in the steel shed provision industry and very necessary work to protect the rural environment will be left undone. Many farmers at the smaller end of the scale who are absolutely dependent on grant aid to finance these works will be forced out of farming through Government indifference on the one hand and on the other hand by those vested with carrying out pollution control duties.
It is essential if the Government are intent on restoring this scheme in the near future that it be done practically immediately. Time is an essential factor in the planning and carrying out of these works in the agricultural diary. There is only a certain period, given that planning procedures take a minimum of two months, within which farming enterprises are in a position to devote time and energy to carrying out these works. It is essential that the scheme be restored immediately.
What are the consequences if this scheme is not restored? A whole range of necessary rural protection works will be suspended indefinitely and we could have a return to the fish kill seasons which we experienced in the mid-eighties. I appeal to the Minister, as someone who has a good understanding of the rural economy, to restore these grants immediately to protect the environment and to protect scarce jobs. We could do without this poorly thought out suspension of a scheme which has given valuable employment.
