As I was concluding this debate the last day I asked if the Opposition were aware that the agricultural section of the community was in such a drastic state. Were they aware that farm incomes had slipped to such a drastically low level? If they were, they did absolutely nothing to stop this major decline in farm income. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the major problems affecting the agricultural community is the number of progressive farmers who find themselves in financial difficulty. In the past six months since the Government took office it introduced a 5 per cent subsidy for developing farmers which will cover grant-aided borrowing since 1974. This is a very worthwhile subsidy and will relieve the pressure on many farmers who borrowed large sums of money in the mid-seventies when agriculture was at its peak and who now find themselves in major financial difficulty. This together with the national subsidy of 5 per cent which will cover all other farmers who carried out grant-aided improvement works will undoubtedly mean that all farmers with major borrowings which have been grant-aided will qualify for both of these subsidies. It will also, I have no doubt, relieve a lot of the financial pressure on farmers who developed their farms and now find themselves caught with a high interest rate and a recession in agriculture.
This Government, from the day they took office, have shown a commitment to and concern for the farming community. Expenditure in agriculture has increased by £70 million at a time when there are cut-backs in other sectors. We have increased the level of sheep headage payments to £9.50 for the first 150 ewes in flocks and a further £6.50 for the next 50 ewes. This scheme will benefit over 20,000 farmers, 15,000 of whom live in the west. In addition to that, there is a sheep premium for hogget ewes in disadvantaged areas. I ask the Minister and the Government to consider extending this scheme to the entire ewe flock in disadvantaged areas because it would be in the national interest to do so. It will, on the one hand, have the direct benefit of increasing sheep numbers, thereby increasing our exports and, in addition, it will secure the future of factories. One factory in my own county is at present on a two-day week simply because the sheep numbers have dropped so drastically over the last three to four years. This would be a very worthwhile scheme and I ask the Minister to consider it.
In addition to the above subsidies, the Government have implemented a calved heifer scheme. The subsidy of £70 will be paid to extra breeding stock in both the beef and dairy herd. This is a very desirable and necessary scheme at a time when we find that our national beef breeding herd has been completely depleted. We have a drop in numbers of 300,000 and this is very serious and reflects what is happening in our meat factories today. All our meat factories are on a two or three-day week simply because the cattle are not there to be slaughtered.
Somebody earlier in the debate made the point that live shipments should not be encouraged. I would not like to see that happen because we must have healthy competition between the factories and the live export trade. It is vital for the future of the farming community that these go hand in hand. I do not see why subsidies cannot be given from Brussels to the meat factories here to help them to meet the difficulties that they face similar to those which are given on live exports to Egypt and to other countries. The problem should be tackled in that way rather than by removing subsidies on cattle exported live out of the country.
The management and staff of factories must realise that the farming community lost confidence in them because of the way in which the factories operated in 1974. Farmers had such a dread of meat factories that it would be political suicide for any Government to tamper with the live export trade. The staff of those factories must realise that they will have to co-operate with the farming community to restore the confidence that was lost.
In addition to the £70 subsidy for the calved heifer scheme, this subsidy together with the beef cow scheme and the headage payments in severely handicapped areas will mean that every extra cow will be worth an additional £150 to the farmers there. This will increase the cattle numbers over the next two to three years. This scheme together with the new 14 per cent European Investment Bank loan, administered by the ACC, should give farmers the necessary incentive to buy breeding stock and so restore confidence in the whole farming industry.
One of the major problems affecting our cattle industry at present is the level of animal disease and the cost to the Exchequer. It was very worrying to hear a former Minister for Agriculture stating on Saturday, 16 January, that the type of test that had been carried out here for the last 16 years was not the right one. Taxpayers and the farming community were operating a scheme which, according to that gentleman, was not as satisfactory as it should be. In fact he quite categorically stated that the type of vaccine used was not the correct one.
We have five DEDs at different ends of the county and one could only describe as a complete storm the outbreak of TB that has developed in the herds there. At present 400 herds are locked up in the DEDs of culliagh Creagh, Moore, Kiltullagh and Ballaghaderreen. I ask the Minister to see what can be done to provide additional staff for the veterinary office there so as to get at the root of this outbreak and see how it can be controlled. It is very serious for the farmers involved. The compensation paid for reactors for the last three or four years is absolutely ludicrous and unfortunately, has not been increased for a number of years. The compensation at present for cows and in-calf heifers is £130, which is totally unacceptable. For cattle under 400 lbs dead weight it is £100 and for over 400 lbs it is £60. The Minister will realise the tremendous hardship on farmers when they experience an outbreak in their herd, and this compensation is totally inadequate.
The hardship fund, which has been on the books for years, does not operate, in my opinion. One can qualify for the hardship scheme only if in excess of 20 per cent of the herd is affected, and even at that stage one will be paid only for the number over 20 per cent. This is unacceptable and I ask the Minister to examine it with a view to dropping the percentage level and paying compensation for all cattle where it is deemed that the owner suffers hardship.
I ask the Minister to examine the export of disease-free cattle from locked-up herds. This was operating until February 1980 when it was stopped. I do not see why some arrangement could not be reached whereby those cattle could be transported under permit from the farm to the ship. People in the markets are satisfied when the cattle are disease-free and it does not matter whether they came from locked-up herds. I do not see where the difficulty lies in operating a scheme whereby these cattle can be removed by permit from the farm to the ship.
I believe the 30-day test is unjust. The farmers are the only section of the community who have their assets frozen for a time. If a farmer's cattle are tested and he is not able to sell them within that 30 days, his assets are frozen for the next 30 days because he cannot re-test them and he cannot sell. I would ask the Minister to examine this situation with a view to having the 30-day test extended to 60 days.
The abolition of rates undoubtedly is very desirable and the Government should aim at this for farmers working to a development plan in co-operation with ACOT. Farmers very often find themselves liable for considerable sums in the rate demand for sewerage services, water supply, refuse collection, public lighting and a number of other things from which they do not benefit. Farmers who pay big rates very often live on poor county roads which have fallen into complete disrepair over the past few years. This is unjust and should be examined with a view to a more equitable system.
I come from a county bordered on one side by the Shannon and on the other by the Suck, so naturally I am very interested in drainage. Grant aid was approved for a number of years for the drainage of the Boyle river and its tributaries and also for the Bonet. I regret that this provision was not availed of prior to now by the previous Government because inflation has been whittling away at this money and it is worth substantially less today than when it was allocated in 1978. I take this opportunity to ask the Minister to use his good offices to make available money for starting of those two projects. Last December 12 months money was again made available from Brussels for the carrying out of a survey on the Shannon and its tributaries. This money, £400,000, was subject to an additional £600,000 being made available by the Irish Government. It is regrettable that that money was not taken up in the budget and no finance was made available by our Government to put this survey under way. I ask the Minister to commence this survey as soon as possible.
One of the major problems we have in farming, particularly in the 12 western counties, is the size of farms and the fragmentation of the holdings. A scheme introduced some years ago, known as the small farm scheme, did much good for the west of Ireland. It is established that farmers who participated in it increased production by up to 50 per cent due to their working to a programme and to the advice they were given by local agricultural advisers. They had an incentive and a production target and many of them achieved that target. This scheme worked extremely well. I ask the Minister to examine the possibility of introducing a similar scheme for those small west of Ireland farmers which would increase their production and thereby the income of the people working them. A tremendous asset to that type of farm would be a fertiliser subsidy on, say, the first five tons of fertiliser. This would be of maximum benefit to the 35-acre farmer.
Another scheme in operation for a number of years which has been phased out provided that farmers who employed somebody on the land, be it a son or an employee, got an abatement on their rates. Here again the Government could examine the possibility of encouraging more of our young people to settle down and work on the family farm. The reason many of those people go away to jobs in industry is that the farm unit is not sufficient to maintain two people or to give the young person an income equivalent to what he would get in industry. Yet he has taken up the job of somebody who may have no other alternative but to go on the unemployment register. We could examine the possibility of making an allowance available to those people who would stay at home and work the family farm, thereby increasing production on the farm and at the same time reducing the dole queues.
One of the major concerns throughout the western counties is the extension of the area at present classified as severely handicapped. I know that the Minister is interested in having these areas extended as much as possible and I would ask him to consider having the whole of Roscommon classified as severely handicapped. The population has remained basically static, the quality of the land is poor and farm income is low. There are areas where farmers are working in tremendous hardship such as in the Clonown, Clonbern, Dysart and Ballyforan DED areas and Ballymurry. There is a clear case for having those areas included in the severely handicapped area.
At present in the west there is a major dispute with regard to the North Western Cattle Breeders' Society. This dispute is having a major adverse impact on farming in the west. It is the second dispute which has developed within 12 months and it is having a disastrous effect on the cattle breeding industry there. It is leading to the use of unlicensed bulls because the AI stations are not providing the service. The cost of the service when it was operating was £10, of which the Government paid a subsidy of £5. At the same time east of the Shannon that same service was being provided at £7. I cannot understand why this service was costing £3 more in Roscommon than in Westmeath or Longford. The Government are at present paying a subsidy of £5 per straw to those AI stations and I would ask the Minister to license the co-ops in the west to hold those straws. They can be got in the Dublin area for as little as £2 while at the same time the association who are carrying out this service in Roscommon, Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal are charging £5. They seem to have a complete monopoly there. The Government are giving a subsidy to those people and they should use their influence to have those straws made available for the benefit of the farming community in the west.
Another problem encountered in the past six to eight weeks was the problem of freezing diesel oil. This is the second or third time this has happened during the last four to five years. People buy diesel oil in good faith, whether it be farmers who need it to do their work on the farm, people buying oil for their central heating or people in the haulage business. Unfortunately, when weather conditions deteriorate this oil is not fit to do the job it is supposed to do. The oil is supposed to be treated to such a degree that it can be used in temperatures as low as—9º, but this is not the case. The institute have introduced a standard, which is known as the Irish standard 251, and I would ask the Minister to see if that standard is good enough and to ensure that this is the standard of diesel oil supplied the whole year round. From April to September the oil companies supply diesel which is untreated. Many farmers may only buy the one tank of diesel in the year because they may be getting a contractor to do their heavy work. They may buy that tank of diesel some time during the summer and when they want to use it in winter it is frozen or waxed and will not operate. The same applies to central heating diesel. The Government should bring in an order directing oil companies to have this diesel treated to such a degree that it will not freeze in the type of weather conditions which we have had over the past month and to ensure that this is the standard of oil delivered to the consumer.
Some of my suggestions would cost money. In the financial situation in which the Government find themselves it may be difficult to finance all those measures, but we must remember that agriculture is the motor of the Irish economy. If agriculture collapses the whole economy collapses. I appeal to the Government to ensure that the necessary aids are given to the agricultural community to restore confidence and increase production because I shudder to think of what will happen if farming output is not drastically increased over the next two years. This will be difficult because the level of production has dropped so much. The level of our national herd has dropped to such a low level that it will be hard to bring it up. Our sheep numbers have gone down considerably over the last five or six years and it will be very hard to improve them.
I will raise one further issue which has created major problems for the farming community not alone in my county but right across the whole midlands and west, that is with regard to what is known as the Towey affair, where a large number of farmers supplied cattle to a meat plant in Ballaghadereen and unfortunately did not get paid for their stock. Many of those farmers face bankruptcy. This situation developed in November and December 1980 and nothing has been done by either Governments to alleviate the strain, hardship and the bankruptcy that faces those people.
I ask the Minister to examine the possibility of making an interest free loan available to those people to help to keep them in the farming business until such time as the affairs of Towey are wound up and until those people know if they will be able to recover any of their money. If those people do not get help there is absolutely no hope for them. Some of them had supplied their year's cattle, maybe £6,000 or £7,000 worth of cattle, and others had supplied up to £20,000 and £25,000 worth of cattle and have nothing only a piece of blank paper. I ask the Minister to examine the possibility of making an interest-free loan available to those people.