Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 58a:

In page 29, subsection (1), line 16, to delete “section 32(9)” and substitute “section 32(6)”.

We have tried to put as much thought as possible into this section. It relates to compensation for owners of animals when those animals must be put down or removed from the herd in the case of TB and so on. The valuation around that is a complex enough matter to get right in legislation. The wording as it stands proposes the Minister would propose a valuer and if the farmer was not happy with that valuer, the Minister would propose a second valuer. If the farmer still was not happy with the valuation from the second valuer, the Minister would propose an arbiter for arbitration. I felt that was a one-sided process in terms of the person choosing the people involved. I propose to change this by removing this section and inserting a new section under amendment No. 60. This is a much more measured way to deal with this.

The key element is subsections (8)(a), (b), (c), (d),(e) and (f), in particular, (g)and (h), whereby the Minister will deal by way of regulation with how valuers are proposed and accepted and how the arbitration system might work. The reason is that a Minister needs to have the flexibility to sit down with farming organisations or with this committee to discuss schemes that may be introduced and decide in the future to improve or change things by regulation rather than having to go back to primary legislation. This is a tricky enough area. When we raise this issue people assume we are discussing or confining the legislation to existing schemes such as the TB eradication scheme, which has been hugely successful, that applies compensation when reactors are taken out of a herd and likewise for other eradication schemes. However, there may be some other disease that we do not know about that we may need to respond to.

We also must have flexibility not to pay compensation in certain instances, such as in cases in which farmers may have deliberately spread a disease within their animals; may have infected their animals with a disease; or may have smuggled animals from one farm to another. Clearly if somebody has been doing something illegal and as a result animals must be removed from the herd, he or she should not be paid compensation. There may be instances where only partial compensation is required.

There was a fear initially that under this legislation we were moving away from paying farmers compensation for animals under the eradication scheme or some similar scheme in order to save money. Nothing could be further from the truth. We need buy-in from farmers in particular for schemes that are about animal health and human health. That is the reason we will continue to pay compensation. That is the reason I want the flexibility to keep the existing schemes, which are working and have significant buy-in from farmers.

The scheme is costing us a reduced amount of money each year because it is working. We have fewer cases of TB in the Irish herd than at any time since 1953, when the effect of TB on the national herd was first measured. We are making significant progress, unlike the Government in the United Kingdom mainland and Northern Ireland, which has found it very difficult to make progress in the eradication of the disease in their herds. Part of that success has been as a result of a compensation scheme with which farmers are happy. No farmer is happy to have TB in the herd but they accept they need to take reactors out of the herd and deal with the consequences of the spread of TB. They are compensated for that.

The process by which animals would be valued is something that requires regulation. It is too difficult to deal with it with a blunt tool such a primary legislation. There are other elements that we must deal with through regulation that will also involve guidelines. If one has an outbreak of disease in more intensive farming stock such as chickens, the measurement of compensation is very different. One will not have a valuer valuing the value of individual chickens in a chicken house that has 3,000 or even 10,000 chickens. We will need to be able to deal with different scenarios by regulations as appropriate. This is an obvious example of coming back to the committee with regulations on valuation to ensure we tease out all the issues. It will also be necessary to have quite detailed consultations with farming organisations to ensure we get buy-in from them so that we are on the same page in respect of the valuation system, that is accurate and fair. We do not want to over-compensate farmers, we cannot afford it, in particular at this time, but the valuation must be fair so that both farmers and the authorities are working towards the eradication of diseases that we can eradicate. We must continue to improve and add to the existing schemes.

I hope that explanation deals with some of the concerns that Deputy Ó Cuív has tried to deal with by way of tabling amendments. I know he had an issue in relation to using guidelines for valuations. I am not sure the guidelines are overly relevant to the way the eradication scheme currently works. However, if one has to put in place a new valuation system for pigs or poultry, one would need guidelines to follow an accurate valuation system so that one would not be valuing individual animals one after the other but taking a mean valuation across a flock or a group of animals.

That is what we are proposing to do in amendment No. 60. Amendments Nos. 58a and 62aare very minor amendments correcting the technicalities and cross-references as a result of putting in a new section.