I am very pleased to be in the Seanad. I have always taken the view that it is a very good procedure to introduce legislation in the Seanad, have it debated by the learned Senators and have some public debate on it before it goes to the Dáil. It is much better to accept helpful amendments and amendments which will strengthen the legislation here not least because I was a Member of this great House in former times, although I have no plans to resume membership.
While waiting in the ante-room I was in a position to listen to some of the erudite contributions on the Order of Business. One of the matters raised was the banning of the T-bone steak and our ability to have T-bone steaks on this part of this island in the future. Ireland feels this action is totally unjustified and we have put in train a measure to seek exemption from it. We feel it is unjustified not because we say so, but based on the EU scientific steering committee's criteria. For example, in July of last year, the European scientific steering committee carried out an independent evaluation of our controls. It found that Ireland had, to use the technical term, an optimally stable set of controls in place to protect public health and to ensure food safety. We are, therefore, in that optimally stable category which is the lowest risk category in Europe.
We had a further audit, which happens regularly and which we welcome, around Christmas. The findings, which were issued in January, concurred with those of July 2000. In effect, it meant we had an effective feed ban and that the feed ban – in other words, meat and bonemeal recycling – was effectively in place. It was satisfied as a result of visits to milling establishments and so on that there was no cross-contamination. That effective feed ban and that optimally stable categorisation by the European scientific steering committee has been in operation and effectively enforced since 1998. Prior to that, the time temperature combination and the pressure combination in males was at a lower level so there was a complete tightening up in 1997 after the 1996 House of Commons statement.
Yesterday, the EU standing veterinary committee decided to ban T-bone steaks in Ireland and in a number of other countries. However, it exempted the UK and Portugal, for example, and some countries which do not, officially at any rate, have a BSE case as yet. It is unjustified based on the EU's criteria and it makes no sense to us whatsoever because we have put the con trols in place. Those controls have been audited by the EU and it is now saying that even though we are optimally stable, it is going to ban T-bone steaks.
As regards T-bone steaks in younger cattle, for example those under 30 months of age, all the scientific data available to us and all the research shows that no infected animal has ever been found under 30 months of age. All the beef available in Ireland at local abattoirs is under 30 months of age. Any beef going into the human food chain over 30 months of age for export – it is under 30 months of age for the domestic market – is tested. Farmers have the option of testing animals over 30 months of age before they go into the human food chain.
The most effective precaution one can take is to remove the specified risk material and this is not just somebody in the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development saying so, it has also been said by the most eminent authority on this subject, Professor Michael Gibney of Trinity College, who was chairman of the scientific steering committee and is still a member of this committee. The specified risk material is removed from all animals going into the human food chain, as is the case in relation to all animals in Ireland. We have sought an exemption from the ban on T-bone steaks and we are confident that we will get that exemption.
The frightening thing is that a decision was taken before Christmas to introduce a destruct scheme. Many people, including myself, are unhappy about the destruct scheme. Virtually everybody sees no sense in destroying good healthy beef, but that decision was taken, and there is a degree of panic in relation to these decisions. It is important that scientists and researchers give us, the policy makers and decision takers, a sound scientific basis for making decisions and not run off making one decision one day and another decision another day.
I opened a conference in Malahide this morning run by the Teagasc food centre there which was attended by the most eminent people from all over the world. The discussion was on a most serious problem, e.coli. Salmonella is also a serious problem. The incompatibility of this so far as the EU is concerned is that it is concentrating almost exclusively in the food safety and public health area on BSE to the extent that one would think there was no other problem affecting human health. At the same time the greatest killer of tens of thousands of people each year in the EU is related to cigarette smoking. The EU implements polices each year propagating and promoting tobacco growing on which it expends in excess of £1 billion each year. It is about time the scientific authorities in the EU had a more balanced approach to public health. We all want food that is safe, pure, free from any residues or harmful micro-organisms and conditions that affect human health. We support those totally but we want a coherent approach to it.
From a marketing point of view – and I do not want any confusion in relation to this – it effectively means we cannot export bone-in-beef to the UK which is still our biggest market where consumption has been quite high. This means it will be more difficult to get back into Egypt and the very valuable third country markets there because of this decision. It is a negative position from two points of view, reassurance of the public which is most important and from a marketing point of view it makes life extremely difficult.
I am pleased to introduce this Bill which is designed to implement a commitment I have given to the farming community by improving the system for considering appeals. The Bill is a relatively short and straightforward one. Its purpose is to further improve the service my Department provides to its clients by strengthening the rights of recourse available to farmers wishing to challenge decisions made by the Department regarding their entitlement to benefit under any of the direct payment schemes.
Most Senators will be aware that my Department already runs an appeals unit which has been considering appeals in relation to the headage and premium schemes since 1995. The purpose of this Bill is to reinforce the independence of that service by putting it on a statutory basis and to widen the range of schemes coming within its remit. I should add that I am fully satisfied with the competence and impartiality of the existing appeals unit, and I want to put on record my appreciation of the quality and industriousness of their work over the years. I want also to ensure that the service is accepted unequivocally by the farming community as independent of the decision making process within the Department.
It was for that purpose that a commitment was included in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness to "establish on a statutory basis, in accordance with the principles of natural justice, an independent, accessible, and properly resourced appeals unit whose remit will include all FEOGA schemes paying directly to individual farmers". I have taken the opportunity to include within the scope of the new office not only all these schemes, but also all relevant nationally funded schemes.
I am availing of the opportunity to implement an undertaking I have already given to the Oireachtas by making provision for the input of the appeals office into my decision making on whether to refuse or revoke a certificate of approval under the national beef assurance scheme.
I would hope the House will receive this Bill in the spirit in which it is proposed, that is, as a measure to strengthen the independence and effectiveness of the appeals process, an objective that is shared by all of us. This is not a particularly complex Bill and most of its provisions are self-explanatory. I propose to give a short commentary on the main points and to set out the rationale behind them where this would be help ful. I have taken care to build on the model already laid down in statute in respect of the social welfare appeals office which has been operating effectively since its establishment in 1990. I intend that my Department's appeals office, with the approval of the Oireachtas, will follow very closely the model laid down by the social welfare legislation.
The independence of the agriculture appeals office is its crucial aspect. While the staff of the office will be recruited from within my Department and its funding will likewise, with the approval of the Minister for Finance, be provided from within my Department's Vote, this Bill provides that its operational independence will be total. Here again I have been guided by the successful precedent established by the social welfare appeals office.
The Bill provides for the appointment of appeals officers by the Minister. Their function will be to make determinations on appeals made by affected persons against decisions taken by the Department in respect of the relevant schemes. Affected persons mean farmers who have applied under the relevant schemes – those schemes are set out in the Schedule to the Bill. The Schedule lists 28 schemes and consists of all the direct payment schemes currently in operation together with their immediate predecessors where there has recently been a substantial change in the structure or name of a scheme. The practical benefit of this provision is that all the direct payment schemes can be considered by the appeals officers. It has been an undoubted limitation of the current appeals unit within my Department that it can consider only headage and premium schemes. This Bill seeks to extend that coverage to include such other major schemes as the REP scheme and the early retirement scheme as well as the miscellany of smaller schemes, still very important, designed notably to facilitate on-farm investment. The list of schemes can be expected to evolve as the structure of direct payment schemes evolves.
Appeals officers shall, subject to this Act, be independent in the performance of their functions. This is the core of the Bill. Decisions taken by the office will be binding on the Department. There will be no ministerial or departmental authority to intervene in the decision making process. Managerial accountability will be preserved by the requirement that the chief appeals officer shall submit an annual report to the Minister and provide such other information as the Minister may require. In this way the Minister can inform himself as to the position in relation to the management, organisation and staffing of the office and make changes in those areas if he considers it necessary.
Collectively the appeals officers and their support staff will be known as the agriculture appeals office. Following the practice in respect of the social welfare appeals office, the word "office" is not built into the Bill but will nonetheless be the name of the organisation in its everyday oper ations and will be the name appearing on the letterhead and so on. The office will be headed by a chief appeals officer who will be designated by the Minister. The chief appeals officer will be the director of the office. He or she will also have a deputy, again to be designated by the Minister.
The Bill does not go into details on the appeals procedure, providing instead that, as in the social welfare appeals office, these will be laid down by regulations. These regulations are now almost complete and will be published shortly after the enactment of this Bill on the assumption that this House and the Dáil will approve it. Gearing the appeals office into action will not be delayed for lack of procedural regulations.
The Bill expressly provides for the holding of oral hearings and also stipulates that an appeals officer, when considering an appeal, may decide the case as if for the first time, that is, he or she is not restricted to considering the grounds on which the appeals decision was made. The appeals officer will therefore be able to take a broad view. Section 8(4) provides that the decision on an appeal shall be made as soon as practicable, having regard to any guidelines laid down in this regard by the Minister. It is my strong concern, and one that is, I imagine, shared by every Member, that appeals should be processed as quickly as possible. The guidelines I will be issuing in this connection will, therefore, tend towards a short interval for deciding appeals rather than a long one. I envisage a turnaround period of 12 weeks, which is a reasonably tight interval in the circumstances, but I am reluctant to stipulate a precise deadline for all appeals because some appeals with be straightforward and simple while others will be complex. Senators will recognise that cases vary in complexity and it would be imprudent to commit a statutory process to deliver a result within a timetable which would not in all cases be realistic. In preparing the guidelines my concern will be to minimise the time taken to process an average appeal while recognising that certain complex cases will take longer.
The Bill also provides that subject to exceptions to which I shall refer, the decision of an appeals officer shall be final and conclusive. The purpose of this provision is to ensure finality in the matter within a reasonable length of time. The appeals office will be an expert tribunal with statutory responsibility to determine the matters referred to it. By the end of the appeals process the application will have been considered in depth twice by specialist officers having been initially considered by the deciding officer whose decision is being appealed and a presumption of accuracy and reasonableness must attach to the decision emerging from the that process.
Mistakes are, of course, made and they are made on both sides. That is the reason for an appeals mechanism in the first place. An applicant may nonetheless take the view that the appeals process was vitiated by a mistake of law or unreasonableness or lack of fair procedures. In those cases the appellant may appeal the decision of the appeals officer to the High Court. Provision is also made for internal revision of a decision within the office, either when new evidence comes to light or the director considers the decision was wrong because of error of fact or of law.
Although the Bill is primarily concerned with direct payments schemes paying cash entitlements to eligible applicants, I have taken the opportunity to widen its scope so as to also confer to the appeals office functions in relation to the national beef assurance scheme. When the National Beef Assurance Scheme Bill was considered in the House, Senators took the view that decisions taken under the terms of the Bill be brought within the remit of this appeals mechanism. The scheme operates under the National Beef Assurance Scheme Act, 2000. The core of the Act is the laying down of the requirement on the part of every herd owner wishing to trade in beef that he or she obtain from the Minister a certificate of approval to do so. Where the Minister proposes to refuse such a certificate he or she must give notice to the herd owner of that intention. Section 15(2) of the Act provides that the herd owner may, on receipt of such notice, make representations to the Minister within 14 days of the date of issue of the ministerial notification. Section 16(2) provides for similar giving of notice and the right to make representations where the Minister intends to revoke a certificate already issued.
In the course of the passage of the Act through the Dáil, I gave a commitment to bring within the remit of the appeals office this question of the refusal or revocation of a certificate of approval. I have come to the view that the best way to ensure the effective input of the appeals office is to provide that any representations which the Minister may receive under sections 15(2) of 16(2) of the Act must be referred by him or her as soon as may be to the director of the appeals office for advice and that before deciding whether to proceed with a refusal or revocation the Minister must have regard to the director's advice which must be delivered within 28 days. We are the only country in Europe to have a statutory national beef assurance scheme. It could be expected to be helpful to us in our deliberations in Europe. The scheme is coming into immediate effect.
Setting up a statutory appeals mechanism under the National Beef Assurance Scheme Act has the effect of taking all the schemes coming within the ambit of the appeals office out of the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman. This is the inevitable result of section 5 of the Ombudsman Act, 1980, which precludes the Ombudsman from any role in relation to matters in respect of which there exists an independent statutory right of appeal. That would be an unsatisfactory outcome, given the valuable functions the Ombudsman performs in protecting the rights of the recipients of public services. For that reason I am making provision for the retention by the Ombudsman of his or her functions in relation to the relevant schemes. This is achieved by adding appeals officers under this Bill to the First Schedule of the Ombudsman Act, 1980. The appeals officers will thereby become persons whose decisions may be investigated by the Ombudsman in the normal way.
Preserving the Ombudsman's role in this way is consistent with my intention, to which this Bill gives expression, that the establishment of the agricultural appeals office will reinforce the rights of the course available to clients of my Department where they are dissatisfied with the Department's decisions on applications they have made. In this connection the Bill also provides that the reasons for making the decision made by the appeals officer shall be notified in writing to the appellant. This provision may not be strictly necessary in that the appellant has this right under section 18 of the Freedom of Information Act, 1997, and probably also has it under common law. Nonetheless, it is useful to state it expressly in the present context to reinforce the openness of the procedures and I now seek the approval of the Oireachtas to enshrine this in statute.
The appeals mechanism I am proposing in the Bill goes beyond the valuable consumer response facilities provided for by my Department, which has been innovative in drawing up and implementing a consumer service programme. In addition to the customer service action plan, the Department has developed the farmers' charter and, more recently, in conjunction with the farming representative organisations under the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, the protocol on direct payment schemes. These initiatives are evidence that the Department is committed to providing a professional and client friendly service. Demanding deadlines for making payments have been laid down and have, by and large, been met. The targets in the current protocol extend beyond rigorous payment deadlines into procedures for the conduct of inspections and so on. The country is acknowledged as being the European leader in this respect.
In considering the questions of appeals, the severity of the penalties, especially with regard to innocent errors, has caused grief and dissatisfaction in farming circles. I share what I know is the view of Senators that some penalties which the Department is required to impose are harsh, to say the least. Senators may be aware that on foot of a commitment given in the protocol on direct payments I raised the question of simplification of all of the schemes under the CAP, with particular reference to proportionality of penalties. I raised this matter on a number of occasions at the EU Council of Agriculture Ministers. Following from a Council of Ministers request late last year the Commission has set up a working group representative of all member states, includ ing Ireland, to look at how the CAP arrangements can be simplified.
My Department had made a vigorous approach to the Commission in which it was supported by UK and French colleagues arguing that the reasonableness and proportionality of certain penalties be investigated with a view to ensuring that farmers are not unduly penalised for relatively minor defaults. By that I mean forgetting to sign a form or failing to tick a box. They can lose up to two years' payment, which is unreasonable.
A separate working group is now being established with the remit of recasting the regulation governing penalties. I am convinced that the overall arrangements can be simplified by making more use of database information in the processing of applications. However, I do not wish to give the impression that it will be an easy task to bring about a change of policy in relation to the proportionality of penalties at European level. The institutions have shown they are difficult to convince on these issues.
It is my intention that the appeals officers will be appointed and assume their functions and that the director and deputy director will be designated soon after the enactment of this Bill, subject to the approval of the Oireachtas. I am anxious to give visible and practical effect to the commitment I have given to the farming community and to get the new office into full swing without delay.
I repeat my concern to provide the farming community with an appeals mechanism which will meet their demand for visible independence, wide scheme coverage and prompt attention. To establish that mechanism is the purpose of the Bill, which I commend to the House.