asked the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries if he will sanction grants to farmers to repair buildings damaged by floods and storms where grants had originally been paid to erect them.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Farm Building Grant.
81.
Grants towards the repair of farm buildings damaged by floods and storms are available under the farm modernisation scheme.
I do not know whether the Minister understood my question. Where farmers put up buildings, with the aid of grants and loans, and a storm blows them down is it not only right that the Minister sanction further grants under the farm modernisation scheme, even though the building would be on the same site? The former would be precluded, under the general regulations, from getting a grant for the same site.
The reply I have here says that grants towards the repair of farm buildings damaged by flood or in storms are available under the farm modernisation scheme.
That would be considered a second restrictive grant. Can I take it that full grants would be available where there has been damage to farm buildings?
You cannot get the same grant for a repair job as for a new building.
Where a building is blown down and smashed completely, as many of them are, outoffices, silage layouts and so on, surely the farmer is entitled to get the same grant as for the original building?
No, of course not.
Could I appeal to the Minister to look into this again?
I cannot introduce new grant aids. If they are eligible under the EEC modernisation scheme, by all means I want to see them getting the maximum.
Yes, but that does not answer the question, and we shall be asked the same question again as to what the Department are doing in this regard.
The Department can do nothing. We have joined the EEC and we have to abide by their rules.
Would the Minister say if replacement grants would be available?
Repair grants is what the question asks.
Repair and replacement are very closely associated.
I take it that what the Deputy is looking for is new grants.
Depending on the damage.
If the building is completely destroyed and if there is a time limit clause, that is what we are all worried about.
I am not aware that there is a time limit. I shall inquire into this aspect.