This is a very important and sad matter involving a farmer with a young family in north Kerry who overborrowed from a financial institution to improve his family farm. As a result he is now under severe financial pressure from the bank. In order to prevent the financial institution from moving in to take over his farm he has leased his lands and milk quota. He duly submitted a written application to the Department of Agriculture and Food for a transfer of 24,527 gallons of milk quota from Kerry Agribusiness to Golden Vale. This submission was made directly to the Department in late September-early October. The Department responded on 15 October, raising a number of queries with regard to the submission. The farmer was asked to provide explanations to five queries.
The first query stated that as he had leased all of his permanent milk quota entitlements, under the provision of regulation 4 of the Community's 1995 milk quota, Statutory Instrument 266/95, he had leased all his lands to which the milk was attached. The farmer was to note that under paragraph 3 of the regulation, milk was attached to lands, which defined the lands used for milk production as any area used for maintaining a milk production enterprise including any land used as pasture for cows producing milk and replacement heifers land used for production for feeding to a herd.
The farmer's application for a quota to the Department in 1991 indicated that his total holding consisted of 54 acres, and he was required to explain how he formed the view that his entire milk quota attached to less than 28 acres of land of a total of 54 acres. The farmer responded that 26.74 acres of land was adequate to produce 24,557 gallons of milk as it was of excellent quality. The Department stated that despite the fact he had leased all his dairy lands, he had continued to produce milk for delivery to Kerry Agribusiness — during the period 1 April 1998 to 30 September 1998 he supplied over 22,000 gallons to Kerry Agribusiness and the Department required him to outline in detail the lands he used to produce this milk, as he had leased all of his dairy lands.
The farmer replied that he had leased 13 acres — folio number 645 — from one person, 16 acres — folio number 13940 — from another person and the remainder of his own land, 16 acres, was used to produce 22,000 gallons of milk. The Department also required confirmation of the identity of a person operating lands leased to another named person. The farmer's reply supplied a person's full name and address and went on to state that there were sheep on the farm. The farmer believed the farm was to be used for tilling in the coming year.
The Department's other queries were also answered in a positive manner and all queries were responded to in writing. The financial institutions are pressing the farmer concerned, who did not get a positive response from the Department in the last ten days on the transfer of the quota from Kerry Agribusiness to Golden Vale. I appeal to the Minister of State for a positive response so that this man can secure his family farm for his children, as the financial institution will be moving in on him before the weekend.
