Vol. 362 No. 13
(Limerick West) asked the Minister for Agriculture if he will instruct the officers of his Department when determining eligibility for the feed voucher scheme that the quality of the existing fodder held by the farmer will be the criteria rather than quantity as seems to be the case at present and if he will make a statement on the matter.
162.
asked the Minister for Agriculture if he will change the methods of assessment of the fodder on the farm scheme from the total amount of good quality; if he continues to consider farmers on the total amount of fodder; and if he is aware that a number of genuine farmers who have large quantities of poor fodder will fail to qualify with the serious consequences that they will have to sell stock due to the inferior quality of fodder on the farm.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 161 and 162 together. As some 90,000 applicants have been received under the feed voucher scheme it has been necessary to adopt a simple and straight-forward scheme with minimum on-farm inspections so that vouchers can be issued as quickly as possible. It would not be feasible to carry out individual on-farm inspections as this would delay the issue of vouchers for some months. However, in calculating the individual allocations a generous allowance has been made for the generally poorer feeding value of hay this year.
