Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I think clarification is needed here. It is unfair to say farmers basically did not bother themselves to avail of the opportunity with GLAS. The reality under the scheme for those leasing a farm is it would be necessary for the lease to last for five and a half years, or six years to be comfortable. If such a lease was coming to an end and the land concerned included one of the main projects for qualification for GLAS, the Department made provision for such land not being available again. The result, though, was some of the payments in situations like that fell to about €1,500. It was not worth filling out the GLAS application and that is why we have lost approximately 6,000 farmers in the scheme. That means there is less money in the economy. The knowledge transfer scheme is gone.

Will the Minister examine the forestry situation? I am not even going to talk about the Minister of State with responsibility for forestry. This is a situation where we are going to ask farmers to chop straw and plough it into the ground. Even if we look at Europe's targets on organic schemes, the first requirement in that area is to be 50:50. If a farmer has slats, then it is necessary to have straw bedding behind. We are then going to tell everyone to chop the straw and drive it into the ground.

Let us think for a minute about what we are doing. The reality is that many millions of euros will not be in farmers' pockets for one reason or another. We must also look at the beef environmental efficiency programme-suckler, BEEP-S, which is €10 million down. That is €10 million less in this country.

One aspect the Minister did not address was forestry. Where did last year's money go from the amount that was allocated last year? Does he agree that we will not even come near our targets this year? He spoke about how we brought in legislation. Everyone here supported it and would do so any day of the week. The Minister should have a look at the figures that come out on the dashboard every week. They are absolutely horrendous. The forestry sector is getting worse. It would pay for Ministers to be good to, and talk to, the industry at the moment. We are, again, in a few weeks of crisis. The same thing keeps coming out with people saying they are sorting it and they got this and that done. I am not just targeting the Minister. I know a junior Minister is also supposed to be resolving the issue. It is in chaos, however. Where are we going? We are putting in and looking at figures everyone knows. We are not opposing the Minister. The bottom line is that these are dream figures, however. We have a big amount down for forestry this year that will go back to the Exchequer. Where else is it going to go? It will not be doing the work. That money will not be in farmers' pockets because the Minister's Department is not functioning, to put it bluntly.

One should look at the different schemes in terms of the ways in which they are set up, and the GLAS, especially. I know several farmers who could not get the land for the next five years. What brought them into it was fencing along rivers or wild bird cover or whatever else; I believe the fancy term used was "priority access". When they did not get that land, they were brought down to a smaller area and it was not worth their while. If a person has 4.2 acres, on average, and he or she loses 50% of that, he or she would be wasting their time. The Department needs to look at how we get money into farmers' pockets. I do not care how we go about it. With the best will in the world from the Minister, if one adds forestry, the environmental scheme and all the different schemes along with the €10 billion put down in Europe, farmers will be down €100 million. That is not good. That is money that would be spent in communities around the country.