Adjournment Debate. - Area Aid Livestock Schemes. – Dáil Éireann (27th Dáil) – Wednesday, 10 Nov 1993

Adjournment Debate. - Area Aid Livestock Schemes.

Mr. Connaughton

I am very grateful to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry for attending. There is untold anxiety and confusion among the farmers of Ireland this week because it appears that the Department will insist that every livestock farmer in Ireland produce an original 25-inch map of his farm to be eligible for the livestock scheme in 1994. Does this mean that a farmer must pay £25 for the original map or £42 for the same map after mid-December? Can the Minister confirm the rumour that farmers will have to produce an original map every year when applying for headage grants and cannot produce a copy of the original map? I sincerely hope that is not true. If it is, it is the most costly bit of tomfoolery that I have ever heard of. Surely farmers who already have copy maps of their farms should not have to go to the trouble of purchasing originals. Many farmers on fragmented holdings will have to get two or three maps. This will lead to the clogging of the systems at the Ordnance Survey Office and the Land Registry which will, in turn, delay people who have to get an original map.

If the EC insists an up-to-date map of the actual acreage farmed in a given year must be on file, the onus can easily be put on farmers who either purchase extra land or rent land in a given year to inform the Department of this and lodge a map in respect of that land. It is a foolproof system when one considers that not more than 10 or 15 per cent of land changes hands in any one year. Is it reasonable to expect that 90 per cent of our farmers should have to go through this tortuous and costly procedure every year when there is no need for it?

I also ask the Minister to clarify if the Ordnance Survey Office is capable of ensuring that every farmer has a map in time for the 1994 livestock schemes. Must the maps be presented with the application form or can they be submitted after the application date has expired? I ask the Minister to deal with each of the questions I raised because approximately 100,000 farmers are anxiously awaiting his reply.

Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry (Mr. J. Walsh)

I thank Deputy Connaughton for bringing this matter to the attention of the House and I am pleased to be here to respond to his query.

EC regulations governing the administration and control of the premium schemes flowing from the CAP reform require that our administrative system should have the capacity to identify each plot, locate each plot, define the area of each plot and identify the usage of each plot on which premium aid is being claimed.

In compliance with this requirement each applicant under the arable aid schemes in 1993 was required to submit a map showing the boundaries of the holding as well as the boundaries of each plot on the holding. The requirement to submit maps is being extended to the livestock CAP reform premium schemes as well as to disadvantaged areas headage schemes from 1994. I would remind the House and Deputy Connaughton that these are not national requirements but European Community requirements which are necessary to meet the provisions laid down by the EC for the various schemes.

I am nevertheless acutely conscious of the cost of the maps which are required and my Department has negotiated a special deal with the Ordnance Survey Office to reduce the normal cost. As a result farmers who apply to the Ordnance Survey Office before 15 December next can obtain a map at the specially reduced fee of £25 plus £2 postage. This compares with the normal fee of £42 per map plus £3 postage. Full details of the map requirements have been widely advertised in the farming press over the past week so farmers should be aware of what is required. In addition, I have arranged that help will be available to farmers in Teagasc offices to identify the sheet numbers of their map requirements. Maps may be ordered through these offices at no extra cost.

Deputy Connaughton raised the question of duplicate copies. An essential requirement for the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry is that we can have confidence in the accuracy of the maps which farmers submit. Maps need to be legible and this is a problem with many duplicate copies. Even more to the point, size distortion is a factor in photocopies and this increases the error rate in maps and calls into question certain procedures which are used for checking areas on maps. For these reasons we have decided that we want Ordnance Survey maps for the 1994 schemes. Farmers will be required to submit with their area aid applications Ordnance Survey maps on the 25 inches to the mile scale in all areas for which maps on this scale are available. Maps on the 6 inches to the mile scale will be acceptable from farmers who are already in possession of such maps and from those in areas where 25-inch scale maps are not available. My Department is also prepared to accept original certified Land Registry maps from farmers who already have these.

In the final analysis it must be remembered that the value of the various European Community premium and headage schemes to Irish farmers is of the order of £600 million per annum. We must be prepared to meet the European Community requirements if these payments are to be assured.

Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 10 Nov 1993