On this matter of the views of the Joint Committee on Secondary Legislation relating to the classification of disadvantaged areas and related matters, I would like to make a number of observations. Firstly, I believe that the timing of this review is very appropriate, because at the present stage farmers generally, not alone in the disadvantaged or less privileged areas, but throughout the whole country are, in fact, confronted with a very serious economic situation.
In the Minister's outline to us last week we got all the details vis-a-vis the representations which were made to him and to his Department and so on by different groups like the committees of agriculture, farming organisations at national and local level and so on. All the proposals and suggestions by these various agencies have obviously been taken on board by the Minister. This review, which is the third one, differs quite significantly from the previous two and indeed from the original designation, in so far as at this stage there is a very significant move away from the district electoral division aspect or concept. The criterion used here is the townland. This is a very great advance. I believe that all concerned with the situation are to be complimented for looking in that direction, rather than staying with the old DEDs which existed where several townlands made up a DE area. For that reason you had areas in that did not necessarily need to be in and vice versa.
I would submit to the Minister that even with the townland as the base for including an area or excluding it there are still major anomalies with regard to this whole question of the classification of the country for the purposes of special aid and so on. There are vast regions of this country that unfortunately do not get anything like what they require to make them viable. There are many small farms in various counties that are totally excluded from the various headage payments that we talk about in this whole context. That is one thing, I would say quite emphatically to the Minister that needs to be looked at again. We have certain disadvantaged farms, in fact more disadvantaged than many of the farms that are within a disadvantaged area at the present time or indeed even in the future, arising from the Minister's good work and his team in getting an extension of the area. I am satisfied there will be a lot of areas, certainly a lot of disadvantaged farms in what might seem to be good areas, left out. I would like the Minister to take very serious cognisance of that, because it is a basic weakness in the whole scene of things. I feel that until we have a position whereby the actual farm would be viewed in its position in relation to being disadvantaged or not, we have not reached the goal that we should be aiming for. There are, I am aware, very significant changes that will come about as a result of this review and the extension of the disadvantaged area in the country. We will have more areas in. A survey was carried out of approximately four million acres and hopefully we will have a fair percentage of that included in the new scheme. That will be a step forward, but the handicaps and weaknesses to which I have referred will still remain with us.
I should compliment the Minister for the very in-depth and detailed analysis that was made of this whole subject prior to our submission being made to the EC for consideration. It is a matter of urgency now that we do have pretty quickly an indication as to what the position is with regard to our proposals and to know where we stand with regard to these new areas.