Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. Smyth for his presentation. I have been asking questions about this issue for a long time on this committee. It was a condition of the Programme for a Partnership Government that there would be a review of the appeals process. The reality on the ground is that farmers have lost confidence in the appeals process and the procedures surrounding it. Our job is twofold. We want to restore farmers' confidence in the process and we can do that by ensuring there is fairness in the process. We need an independent chairman. With all due respect to the personnel of the Department, an independent chair is not someone who has spent his or her life working in the Department. Many people with the required CV are not former employees of the Department. I am not casting aspersions on anyone's character but we are trying to restore confidence and that is one of the essential things that needs to be done first.

We also need an appeals structure with farmer representation. I refer to the model for tuberculosis, TB, compensation. If there is a dispute over TB compensation, an appeal can be made to a body which has farmer representation. In general, that has worked well and there are few complaints when people use that appeals process. People are happy with the findings. I know of one case lately involving a high economic breeding index, EBI, herd. The farmer was not at all happy with the valuation system. An appeal was made to that body and it was felt there was a fair hearing. Farmers' representation on the appeals body added greatly to the credibility of the process.

When an inspection is carried out and it is proven subsequently that it was not carried out correctly according to the terms and conditions of the scheme, then no sanction should be applied. From past experience, unfortunately, in a significant number of cases inspections have not been carried out in accordance with the terms and conditions and substantial fines have ensued. If there is a Garda prosecution and everything is not done correctly, when it goes to court it is automatically thrown out without any debate. The same thing has to happen here. Department officials who are carrying out inspections have a rule book. If it is seen that they have not adhered to that when carrying out the inspection, if it has not been in accordance with what is laid down in black and white, then that inspection has to be null and void. That is absolutely essential to restoring farmers' confidence in this whole process.

I welcome the review. We have our Agriculture Appeals Act and we have a job of work to do now. Those changes would go a long way towards restoring farmers' confidence and ensuring that in future farmers would be confident of getting a fair hearing. It is important to state that we are talking about a minority of cases where people feel they have to go for appeals - not every farmer that is going down this route. Where they do go down this route we have had much publicity in the last couple of weeks about questions being asked. In my neck of the woods, this issue goes back five, six, seven and eight years.

We were very critical and I produced figures here which showed the levels of fines in one part of Tipperary versus the other part was at a ratio of 3:1. In my view, there were not more non-compliant farmers in north Tipperary than south Tipperary, and definitely not to that ratio. There were significant issues. Many of those individual farmers, unfortunately, went the appeals route and the outcome was not what I would consider satisfactory. Those are my recommendations and they come from extensive consultation with farmers who have been in throes of this and feel they have been unfairly treated by the whole process. If we could get those three things from this review, we will be going a long way down the road to restoring confidence and ensuring that farmers will feel this appeals process will give them an fair outcome. They might not always like the outcome they get but if they get a fair hearing, that is what is being asked for and demanded.