Vol. 496 No. 5
1 Mr. Connaughton asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the proposals, if any, he has to provide financial help to farmers outside of the designated areas who have insufficient quantities of winter feed; and if he will take applications for the fodder scheme from individual farmers who meet the criteria but who live outside designated areas. [23233/98]
The purpose of the fodder scheme is to provide assistance to certain livestock farmers who face significant winter fodder problems. These problems have arisen due to the prolonged wet weather conditions experienced during the 1998 growing and fodder saving season. It is recognised that farmers on peat or heavy clay soils in certain areas were particularly badly affected.
Financial assistance under the fodder scheme is being made available to all sheep farmers with mountain grazings, suckler cow producers and small dairy farmers, with milk quotas of less than 35,000 gallons, in the worst affected areas in Counties Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo.
There are approximately 15,000 sheep farmers with mountain grazing. A payment of £4 per ewe or hogget on up to 75 sheep per flock will be made. Payment on suckler cows will be confined to farmers in designated district electoral divisions in the 12 counties. It is estimated that there are more than 31,000 applicants for suckler cow premium in the areas affected — more than 5,000 of these are also small scale milk producers. A fodder payment of £40 per cow up to a ceiling of £300 per applicant, equivalent to 7.5 cows, will be made. Small-scale dairy farmers located in the DEDs designated in the 12 counties will qualify for a fodder payment of £30 per 1,000 gallons of quota up to a ceiling of £300 or 10,000 gallons. Dairy farmers with a quota of up to 35,000 gallons in 1998 will qualify.
The areas in question were identified as the worst affected areas in a Teagasc survey completed in September. While some farms outside the designated areas have fodder difficulties, these farms are generally located in geographical areas where fodder is more readily available. Accordingly, it is not planned that such farmers will be included in the scheme. It should be noted that the payment on sheep is based on mountain grazings as per the sheep headage scheme and goes far beyond the 12 counties listed.
The primary objective of the scheme is to give immediate help to farmers in the worst affected areas and the approach which I have adopted is the best way of achieving that objective.
Payments under the scheme, up to a maximum of £300 per applicant, are essentially lucky bag money. Will the Minister inform the House how, by drawing a line on a map in one of the wettest years we have experienced, it can be determined that a farmer on one side of the line is entitled to the payment while a farmer experiencing similar difficulties — namely, lack of fodder or poor quality fodder and an inability to sell his cattle — on the other side of the line is ineligible for payments under the scheme? On behalf of the 90 per cent of farmers who will not receive any payment, I ask the Minister if he is prepared to accept applications directly from individual farmers who are experiencing a serious fodder crisis?
Following the bad weather experienced in June and July of this year, Teagasc carried out a survey in August which was completed in September. I was then asked to introduce a fodder scheme to address the problem and decided the Teagasc survey offered the best way to proceed. I asked Teagasc to outline the worst affected areas and I am arranging for payments to be made on that basis.
Adverse weather conditions have been experienced in this country for many centuries and difficulties for farming arise out of those every year. This year was a particularly bad one. Fodder schemes have been introduced in the past which, in virtually all cases, were regarded as unsatisfactory for one reason or another. I want to use the limited amount of money available to make expeditious payments directly to those farmers worst affected.
I put it to the Minister that he is hiding behind Teagasc in regard to this matter. Teagasc identified many more areas in its survey and it was the Minister and his Department who decided on the final number of counties. We are all aware that the areas which have been included in the scheme are entitled to it but I cannot understand why the Minister will not allow individual applications to be made given that prices are far worse now than they were when the Minister announced the scheme under remarkable conditions at the ploughing championships. The Minister did not know then whether £10 million or £16 million would be made available; there was disarray in the camp on that occasion. Perhaps that was because the Minister for Finance had the final say in the matter.
