Vol. 459 No. 6
152 Mr. Aylward asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry if he will review the regulations governing the social assistance butter scheme to include low fat butter spreads and other dairy products in view of the fact that many people no longer use standard butter in view of the high butter fat content for health reasons and the vouchers are therefore of no value to them. [18443/95]
The scheme under which butter vouchers are made available to certain categories of social welfare recipients is wholly funded by the European Union as part of the EU dairy market support regime. A review of the regulations governing the scheme would, therefore, be a matter for the EU Commission and I am not aware of plans for such a review.
It should be pointed out that the primary purpose of the scheme is to help support the EU butter market. Therefore there would not be great support for including other products which, in fact, compete with butter on the market.
