Adjournment Debate. - Grant Payments. – Dáil Éireann (28th Dáil) – Wednesday, 17 Oct 2001

Adjournment Debate. - Grant Payments.

Mr. Ring

I thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, for selecting this matter on the Adjournment tonight. The payment of control of farmyard pollution grants is an issue of great concern. I have raised this issue with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development over many months because many farmers told me they had not received their payments. It is unbelievable that farmers who have been approved for these grants and who have carried out the work have not received their payments. When they received approval for these grants they believed there was enough funding in place to meet all applications. Some of the farmers have received part payment, while others have not received any payment. This is adding further strain to farmers who are already suffering the effects of the foot and mouth disease crisis.

I have been told that discussions are taking place between the Department and the European Commission. Have these talks been finalised? Has approval been given by Europe? How long more will farmers have to wait for payment? I now demand that moneys and interest be paid out immediately to these farmers who have waited for a long time and who are under pressure from the banks. I am hoping the Minister will announce that these grants will be paid tomorrow morning. A farmer who owed a lot of money to the bank visited my clinic last week. As the Minister knows, the banks do not have much respect for farmers and do not listen to them. The bank now pressurising him, insisting that he must make the payments. He is under severe pressure and cried in my clinic. His nerves are gone and he is under tremendous strain. I hope the Minister will announce that he has obtained agreement from Europe.

It does not make much sense to announce national and local schemes which tell farmers to go ahead, when we must await approval from Europe. We should only have to seek approval from Europe if it is needed. As this is a national scheme, the Minister should pay out, as he did for sheep farmers, even if we do not have approval from Europe. If the Minister does so, he will be doing nothing wrong. Farmers were being told that they were polluting. They are now trying to rectify the situation by adhering to the rules and protecting the countryside environment through the REP scheme. All they are asking the Minister for are grants which have been approved. All I want to hear the Minister saying is that he will start to pay out tomorrow morning. That is a simple request.

We should forget about Europe. The Minister is like me in this respect because there are too many rules and regulations in Europe. The Minister will have my full support and that of my colleagues and the farming community if he pays out. If anybody from Europe contacts him, he should send them down to the west to meet the farmers. When they see the situation there for themselves they will have no hesitation in approving this scheme. I hope the Minister's response will be positive. I do not want to hear what has been said in recent weeks, which is that discussions are ongoing. The Minister, Deputy Belton and I have been discussing this matter for a long time and what we want is positive news.

Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development (Éamon Ó Cuív)

The motion tabled by the Deputy was less than clear. I thank him, however, for raising the issue and clarifying what he meant. There are a number of schemes involved. Some relate to the package of measures launched in February this year under the national development plan, of which the farm waste management, dairy hygiene and alternative enterprises schemes are the most relevant. In addition, a number of payments remain outstanding under the older national scheme for the control of farmyard pollution.

The new schemes, with the scheme of installation aid for young farmers, form part of a package of measures by means of which some £260 million is being made available over the period up to 2006. The measures which relate directly to on-farm improvements account for just under £250 million of this, the vast bulk of which, £181 million, is allocated to farm waste management projects.

Unfortunately, as the House is well aware, these schemes were only up and running a few weeks before the foot and mouth crisis exploded. One of the first things my Department had to do to control the imminent threat of this terrible disease was to impose an immediate ban on farm visits. This meant that none of the applications received under the new schemes could be formally approved, since the conditions of the various schemes require that inspectors from my Department visit each applicant first and examine the position for themselves. While the ban on farm visits was lifted at the end of May, the majority of these inspectors remain assigned to foot and mouth duties. This has seriously affected the rate at which applications can be approved.

The backlog is, however, being dealt with. Up to 30 September, a total of 2,558 applications had been received under the various new farm improvement schemes. Some 2,019 of these were in respect of farm waste management projects, 396 were for dairy hygiene related works, while 143 related to alternative enterprises. As of now, over 1,200 applications have been examined by our technical inspectorate. Of these, some 600 have actually been inspected on the ground and given approval to proceed. As I said, however, the main problem we face is that so many of our inspectors remain assigned to critical foot and mouth duties and while the threat of this disease remains live, we cannot afford to relax our vigilance.

In order to speed up the rate at which the remaining applications can be approved my Department has sought permission from the European Commission to reduce the level of pre-approval inspections required. We hope, as a temporary measure, we can avoid having to carry out inspections in every case and instead approve most remaining applications on the basis of a detailed desk check. The Commission is considering our request.

With regard to all these new schemes, however, it is important to stress that no payments are actually outstanding to any applicant. The challenge for my Department has been to process and approve the backlog of applications which quite unavoidably developed during the period of the foot and mouth restrictions.

As regards the older scheme – I now understand this was probably the Deputy's main concern – the national scheme for the control of farm pollution is probably the one about which there is most concern. This scheme came into operation on 28 June 1999 as a state aid with formal approval from the Commission which the Deputy should note for expenditure of up to £15 million. The scheme proved highly successful and applications far exceeded all expectations. Up to May this year, my Department had made payments amounting to nearly £15 million under the scheme, in respect of 2,400 individual applicants, and therefore reached the ceiling imposed by the European Commission. By that stage, my Department had already been in discussion with the Commission about raising the ceiling for payments under the scheme. This is very much a technical issue and one which my Department has been vigorously pursuing with the Commission for a number of months. There are a series of formal procedures through which applications of this nature have to be processed in the Commission, and these take time to complete. All state aid applications are handled in this way. As a result, some 650 payments have been delayed, temporarily. However, as indicated in reply to a number of parliamentary questions, formal written approval is expected very shortly. All payments have been prepared and are ready to issue. We expect this to take no more than a matter of days.

The Deputy has proposed an easy solution in this case, but in view of other matters we are negotiating with Brussels, it would be the equivalent of trying to rush sheep into the pen. As a good west of Ireland man, the Deputy knows that well.

Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 17 Oct 2001