Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is the kernel of the issue and the only place I think there could be any disagreement over the Bill. There is mention of a five-person panel that can operate with as few as three members. Should we not have a seven-person panel to ensure we have a better chance of having five people, rather than three people, at the appeal? If we stick to a five-person panel, there may be various reasons people will be unavailable. Perhaps they might be away. If we had a pool of seven from which to pick, would we have a better chance of having a broader appeal board? We have been looking forward to this Bill for a long time but for this to work well, it is important that farmers have confidence in it. That is, in fact, essential. We can make comparisons. There is an appeals body there in respect of TB at the moment and there is an appeals body for live valuations. That works reasonably well and the farm organisations are able to put people onto that panel. The Department obviously has people on it too and it works well. We have here the bones of very good legislation. In fact, more than that, we have a lot of flesh on the bones of very good legislation here. I just feel the panel should be composed of seven people and the farm organisations should have the right to nominate whatever amount of members the Minister thinks appropriate. That would give enormous credibility to the independence of the process. At the end of the day, farmers have been looking for an independent appeals body for a long time. We must have a mechanism whereby they have representation. I think five panel members is too few. For various reasons, people may not be able to make a hearing. We should consider operating a panel of seven. I am not saying that all seven should attend. We could have a panel of seven members and a maximum of five would be in attendance. It was a common theme coming across from the farm organisations when their representatives were here last week. They stressed the independence of the panel and the need for them to be represented. I feel that a seven-person panel would allow for that. I fully accept that the chair of appeals and his or her deputy would not be involved in the original hearing and would be coming to an appeal with a fresh pair of eyes. However, the message came through to us clearly at our meeting on last Thursday morning that for the confidence in the independence of the panel, farmer representation is paramount.

It may not be covered by the Bill but I made a point to the Minister about the fact that force majeure only applies to the applicant. That needs to be looked at. One or two cases have come across my desk where the applicant is not doing the farming but force majeure happens and affects another family member who is doing the actual farming. Force majeure only applies to the person who applies for the payment. That needs to change if it can be proved conclusively that the person affected by force majeure is the person who is running the farming operation.

It is probably not within the remit of the legislation we are talking about but putting it into the farmers' charter or doing it in some other way should be looked at. We will be putting our observations as to how we would like to see the panel working and so on into the report. The Minister can see that there is cross-party support for this around the table. We all welcome it. We just want to put a structure in place so that, when the legislation is enacted, nobody will be sniping at it. The independence of the panel must be sacrosanct so that everybody can be confident in that independence.