Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to take up what Deputy Kenny raised. He talked about farm enterprise in respect of the rural social schemes. I agree that they are very good schemes. I would like to see people staying on them where possible. The difficulty now is to get people to go on these schemes. Where people are on them, they should be left on them. They are giving great value to the community. He is correct about the farm enterprise scheme. We are always looking at ways and means to help small farmers in rural areas. Many depend on grant aid from the State for the schemes they are in.

We recently announced the Leader food initiative of €15 million. That will be focused on small food businesses and to see where farmers might see a niche in the market for themselves. That programme has just opened and will be dealt with under the Leader programme. If people have ideas and enterprises for which they want to make an application, that scheme is available. That is what Leader is for, to let people subsidise their incomes if they come up with schemes and innovation about what they want to do. The Deputy is right that many farmers around the country have other enterprises within their farms and are doing very well with them - simple things that are working well for them. I would like to see more people considering ways and means. I hope this new €15 million small food business programme will-----