Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In his opening statement, the Minister mentioned the 11% increase in the Department budget for 2021, a line he has frequently repeated since the budget was announced. I ask him to give the percentage and absolute number for the increase in payments to farmers.

During his contribution to the debate on the Revised Estimates for 2020, the Minister said that approximately €135 million was to be provided in targeted schemes to support sustainable beef farming. That was the 2020 figure. In his opening statement today, he said he is providing more than €85 million to support sustainable farming. It is the same sentence but with a €50 million difference. I note the beef sustainability schemes have decreased by €50 million and the agri-environmental schemes have increased by about €45 million, which are very close to the same. Has the funding that has been allocated to the agri-environmental schemes just being taken from the beef sustainability schemes or am I misreading those two figures?

I will cover some of the details of programme B. At the beginning of the year the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, lauded the organic farming scheme and said it would deliver 500 new places. According to the figures before us, the Department is targeting 330 additional participants in the organic farming scheme, which comes nowhere near to living up to our obligations, considering the number of farmers who are interested in participating. Is the organic scheme targeting numbers of hectares as opposed to numbers of farmers? One can see where the concerns would arise that people with smaller holdings would be less attractive to the Department.

If it were not so serious, I am sure all members of the committee would have a good chuckle to themselves at the target for the number of hectares of new forestry plantings, which is 8,000 ha, the exact same as it was last year and which was missed dismally. Considering this committee is still hearing evidence from people across the sector saying the problems they are encountering have not been resolved, how optimistic is the Minister of reaching that target this year?

On the sheep welfare scheme, the targeted output has been reduced both in the number of herds participating and the number of ewes paid for under the scheme. Why does the Department envisage a reduction in participants in that scheme?

The committee has had considerable debate on the horse and greyhound funding scheme. When we last spoke about it, the Minister told me approximately 60% of Exchequer funding goes towards prize money. Whatever way the accounting is done, it works out within 1% annually. Whatever the Exchequer gives is what is paid out in prize money. We received confirmation from Horse Racing Ireland that of the €66 million in prize money in 2019, about €385 million was paid to breeders, on whom we depend to sustain the sector. Considering the amount of debate, has the Minister evaluated whether the substantial level of Exchequer funding to that sector is being best utilised to reinvigorate the sector and to ensure the communities dependent on the rural economy are getting the most benefit from the substantial level of funding?