Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 8 December 2022
118. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the measures under budget 2023 that will redress the injustice borne by the group of famers known as the so-called forgotten farmers. [61287/22]
View answerI welcome the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, and the Minister of State, Senator Hackett. The term “forgotten farmer” is used to describe those young farmers who had typically set up their agricultural holdings before 2008, who were under the age of 40 in 2015 but who did not qualify for the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, supports, as other young farmers did. Will the Minister outline his proposals to address that anomaly?
As the Deputy will be aware, I have committed to helping the cohort of farmers known as “forgotten farmers”. This has been a long-standing commitment of mine from the time that I was in opposition to the time that I entered the Government. I ensured that it was part of the programme for Government commitments, and I have been following through on it since. The Department has developed a preliminary outline of a proposal to provide support to this group. I was pleased to have the opportunity at the recent Macra na Feirme conference in Ballykisteen to announce details of proposals that had been developed to address the issue of. I am engaging with my colleague the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, regarding the funding required.
The details of the eligibility requirements and benefits to successful applicants for a scheme to support the forgotten farmer group have yet to be fully finalised and we are working hard to finish this work to open the scheme for applications. Many of these farmers have found themselves in this position through no fault of their own. They have spent a considerable time operating their business at a disadvantage and I am moving as quickly as possible to address this anomaly. The eligibility requirements and other scheme details will be made publicly available as soon as this process has been completed. A lot of work is going to do it. It is complex in terms of the detail, identifying the different cohorts and being able to step it out. There will be significant work in processing the scheme as well but our commitment is crystal clear to follow through on this. There will be a scheme. We are stepping it out and we are now getting to the stage where we are finalising it to open it for applications
The Minister knows that I have been raising this issue with him since his appointment and I acknowledge that each time he has indicated that he is committed to addressing this issue. However, it still has not been resolved and I would like to know where the resistance is or why we have had these delays.
In February 2021, he told me that he was "fully committed to addressing this issue in a way that is fair to this cohort of farmers under the next CAP". In May of that year, he stated: "The programme for Government contains a commitment to seek to resolve under the next CAP the issue of support for this category of farmers." However, by December 2021, which was a full year ago, the language had changed. The Minister then said: "I have asked officials in my Department to examine options to address the issue of forgotten farmers both through the next CAP and also other measures." It, therefore, appears that even as far back as last year, the Minister was of the view that perhaps CAP could not resolve this matter. By October of this year, all references to CAP were removed. Why has there been a delay? Is there resistance? Most particularly, how much is the Minister planning to allocate for this scheme?
There is no resistance and the commitment is crystal clear. For many years, there had been no commitment to these farmers. There was no proposal, plan or Government commitment to address them and to making sure that a scheme was put in place to reflect the fact that they did not get a fair crack of the whip. I made sure when I came out of opposition and went into government that it was a programme for Government commitment and that there would be a commitment by the Government to deliver on it. I have been working that through now as Minister. There has been much work and assessment going into it to identify the different cohorts that are involved and to pull it all together. We are finalising the criteria and the strands around that so that we can go forward with an application process. However, let there be no doubt this is going to happen. This is a commitment. There is going to be a scheme for these farmers that has not been there before. It will be there, and it is a matter stepping it out. There is a lot of work involved in it and it is taking a bit of time, but it is coming. It will be there for them and rightly so.
I will acknowledge that this is an anomaly that was around long before the Minister was in office. It is disgraceful that his predecessors did not resolve it. I acknowledge again that he has committed to resolving it, but for the farmers who are affected, he has yet to do so. I know that he has made statements on the issue in public, but we do not have the necessary clarity. There was no announcement in budget 2022 about how this scheme will be funded, yet, in January, just a couple of months later, the Minister leaked to the media that these farmers would receive up to €5,000 in a lump sum, as well as enhanced targeted agriculture modernisation scheme, TAMS, payments. There was not an announcement though in this year's budget either, but now we have public criteria. The Minister suggested that he is in negotiations with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. How much has he sought for the scheme? How much does he envisage that it will be worth to these young farmers who have been disenfranchised for so long?
I am engaged with Department of Public Expenditure and Reform around what will be required to deliver a scheme. That will become clear whenever we publish the application criteria and the detail around it, and not until then. What is clear at this point is the commitment from me to drive this forward and to deliver on it, as well as to deliver on the promise that I made to the forgotten farmers of Ireland, which was that if I got into government I would deliver on this. That is why I went into government. I want to be in government to make differences such as this. There is complexity to it and that is why it is taking time. The officials have been working diligently on it and it will now step out. It will take a bit of time once the applications are open to process it, because quite a bit of administration will be required to work our way through that. However, let there be no doubt that the scheme will be in place, and the farmers will at long last get recognition of the fact that they did not get a fair crack of the whip when installation aid, etc, was interrupted and taken away and they no longer had the opportunity to avail of it.
