Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 17 February 2015
133. Deputy Martin Ferris asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the measures being taken to resolve the situation of those farmers under 40 years of age, who have been farming full-time for five years, but who are unable to get access to the national reserve. [6901/15]
View answerThe Minister dealt with some of the subject of this question when dealing with Deputy Tom Fleming. It concerns measures taken to resolve the situation of farmers under the age of 40 years, who have been farming full-time for five years but are unable to get access to the national reserve. Can the Minister outline his proposals? The Minister has already answered much of this.
I thank multiple Deputies for raising this issue, which has been an issue for me for quite a while. I thank Macra na Feirme, which has been engaged in the issue long before it became a campaigning issue for some people, over the past number of weeks. Other farming organisations have been involved.
In 2008, the decision was made to shut down installation aid. Farmers were planning to get installation aid as part of their business plans. All of a sudden, the scheme was shut down and they found themselves without the assistance to get started that many of their peers had a few months earlier. In the new CAP, where we pushed hard to get positive discrimination in favour of young farmers to get more young people into farming, the definition of young farmer was someone who came into farming within the past five years under the age of 40. This means many young farmers under the age of 40, who started farming between 2008 and 2010, missed out on installation aid and are now missing out on getting special treatment and top-up payments as young farmers. This group of farmers numbers in the hundreds, not in the thousands. I have been trying to find a way to get them into the category of young farmer but this has been ruled out by the Commission over and over again. There is a clear definition in the regulation.
We have looked at how we can use the national reserve to do it. In order to give someone preferential treatment under the national reserve, they must be in a category referred to as disadvantaged. There must be a reason to pay them extra and so we have been trying to convince the Commission, successfully, that this group of people who missed out on installation aid and are now missing out on being in the category of young farmer, are disadvantaged because they missed out on both supports. As a result, we can help them with the national reserve. That is how it will work.
If a farmer is in that category and his or her payment is below the national average, he or she can apply under phase 2 of the national reserve allocations and we should be able to increase the entitlements to the national average, which will make a big difference for many young farmers.
I concur with the Minister that disbanding installation aid was a huge hit to young farmers in that category. In conjunction with the early retirement scheme, it offered a great incentive for elderly farmers to step back and let young people take over. An answer to a written parliamentary question says there must be a specific disadvantage category group.
The application for use of the reserve for non-priority categories will depend on the availability of funds in the national reserve once funding to the two priority categories have been allocated. Will the priority areas have to be funded before funding is allocated to special disadvantaged areas?
That is a fair question. The priority categories will be new entrants and young farmers who will receive top-ups on their entitlements up to the average figure before they then receive the 25% additional top-up under a separate scheme for young farmers. People will be entering farming for the first time without entitlements or payments. They will be buying or taking out long-term leases on land without entitlements. They will have to be able to apply to receive some entitlement. Once the priority categories are funded through the national reserve, we will examine the old-young farmer category as the next priority. There should be enough money in the national reserve to do this. They will be paid on the basis of up to 90 entitlements, that is, 90 hectares, a decent sized farm by any standard. We do not want people with huge holdings to have a significant bump in their entitlements, but eligible farmers will be receiving payments to push up their entitlements to the national average. It is possible that the national reserve could run out of money, but we have made our calculations on the basis that it will not. If we do run out of money, we will have to consider how we might change the allocation process to use the money we have available to best effect, whether by reducing the area involved or changing the qualifying criteria. We will negotiate with the farming organisations and other stakeholders should that happen. I hope, however, that we will have enough money in the national reserve to deal with it.
It will be very comforting to old-young farmers if there is enough money available to meet that requirement and every effort should be made to ensure that will be the case. Unfortunately, they happen to fall between two stools. What is the Scottish derogation? I previously received a reply which described it as involving the allocation of entitlements to persons who never had held entitlements. The Department informed me that it was considering this issue.
I will revert to the Deputy with an explanation of the Scottish derogation. I am pretty sure I know what it is, but I do not want to outline it without being absolutely sure.
