Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 25 April 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Fodder Crisis: Discussion with Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine

1:50 pm

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to put on record that the Minister is well on top of the issue and should be complimented on that. He asked us for genuine suggestions in respect of it and I will put four very brief ones to him. Will he look at leasing a ship, bringing it to Kent, which is well serviced by ports, and shipping fodder from Kent to here? This would significantly reduce the price of fodder. Will he access the EU solidarity fund? Funding has been used in the past specifically through Teagasc where the Minister dealt with farmers on an case-by-case basis. It was very successful in the past. He could access the EU solidarity fund to deal with issues in particular areas, for example, in Clonown in my constituency where they have now lost four consecutive years of meadow because of flooding of the callows. There is a significant problem with feed and fertiliser merchants who cannot access credit. They cannot pass it on to farmers because they are already overextended and something needs to be done in respect of that. I commend the Minister on looking at the advance buying of fodder because these weather conditions could continue for a number of weeks or months. I suggest that the Department should actively engage with NAMA to access some of the NAMA warehousing to centrally store some of this forage in advance of when it is needed. While it may be shipped in by Dairygold at the moment, in six weeks time, the crisis could be in the west or north east of Ireland. Fodder could be accessed at a number of storage facilities held by NAMA around the country and shipped to wherever it is required in a couple of weeks' time.

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