Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 2 October 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Priorities for Budget 2019: Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine

3:30 pm

Photo of Danny Healy-RaeDanny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not agree with it. It is very unfair to be increasing the cost of VAT and carbon tax when we consider that fuel coming in to the country is so dear at the present time. I asked on the Order of Business that it be reduced rather than increased and I am not good today when I hear that the Stock Market is increasing it rather than reducing it. There is room for manoeuvre when the cost has already gone up. The Government tax take has increased as the cost of the barrel of oil comes in and I believe there is therefore room to manoeuvre and to reduce the cost somewhat to help people with home heating oil, and all fuels.

As to areas of natural constraint, ANC, all farmers payments were reduced in 2008. We got €500 back last year but we need the rest of it and more with the way the thing is going.

Hen harrier designation may not affect farmers and other Deputies here, but it certainly affects part of Kerry and north-west Cork. Farmers are not being compensated as regards the hen harrier designation for not being able to work their land the way they would like to. They cannot plant their land and it is useless and worthless. I said at some forum here that we hear about houses and people being robbed at night, and of break-ins but this is daylight robbery.

Those who own the designated lands and have struggled to buy it, or who have had the land handed down to them are not being compensated. Many of these farms are now worthless because of the Department's hen harrier designation.

There are plenty of places in Kerry suitable for forestry. We have a rule, however, that there has to be 80% green ground in any plot that someone would want to plant. We are not far away from the Minister, and if one goes around any part of our side of the country, one will see that people are lucky to have the 20% of green ground and 80% of all other kinds of ground. It is not arable land and it would be suitable for forestry. There were grants to plant all of that kind of ground in the past and that is where everything has gone wrong. The rules changed and this is impeding the planting of forests.

There is another problem, which is not of the Minister's making. Many farmers now want to take that forestry out of their lands. They are looking for planning permission from the forestry service, or from the county councils, and there is what are called "serial objectors" putting in objections to farmers building roadways and entrances into the places where the forestry was planted. This will militate against farmers in the future. They will know that if they plant that ground, they might not ever be able to take the timber out of it, or sell what they grow. It is going to adversely affect farmers in the future planting forests because they will be afraid that they will not be able to get anything out of it.

Some legislation needs to be brought forward to deal with these serial objectors and to stop this because it is criminal what they are doing to poor people who planted their land, hoped to retire and have a bit of money to help them in their old age. This is a problem in many farms around where I live.

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