Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

First of all, I apologise as I have to speak on a motion in the Dáil at 10.40 a.m., so I will have to leave the committee at 10.30 a.m. I have a number of queries. I admit that I am far from expert on this. We had a useful discussion organised by the committee secretariat just before Christmas regarding means testing the farm assist scheme, among other issues. I want to acknowledge the importance of schemes like this to help ensure that family farms and rural communities are supported. These people play such a crucial role in our society by producing food and sustaining communities. It is important that they are not subject to excessive hardship and that they are able to support themselves and their families. This is the objective of social welfare systems, generally. It is important that particular schemes are tailored to the particular circumstances of farmers.

There are a fair few recommendations, well over a dozen, from the various organisations. I think we will take them all on board. Many of them are very practical and many of them are very sensible, although I would need to consider some of them a bit more before I gave my response to them.

I will not direct my questions to anyone in particular. I mentioned the briefing. One of the things that came up at that stage was awareness. Perhaps this seems like a silly question, but is there an issue around awareness of the scheme? When we look at the county-by-county breakdown, the number of people claiming the assistance in some counties is very small. The figures are: 19 in Wicklow; 33 in Carlow; 35 in Louth; 36 in Laois and 51 in Kildare. These are all counties with a substantial number of farmers. In other counties, the figure is much higher. In Donegal, for example, the figure is 875. Some of this might have to do with the particular nature of farms and the geographic distribution of different types of farming, but it does not seem to be a completely adequate explanation for the discrepancy.

I would like the witnesses to elaborate on the issue around the social insurance contribution. The issue has been flagged to me that there was a difference in the way stamps were treated for people on farm assist prior to 2015. Is there some issue in relation to this? I think people in farming are generally on PRSI class S. I received correspondence from a couple. The gentleman was on farm assist and his wife was a dependant adult on farm assist. In the end up, when they came to pension age, the wife received the contributory pension, but the gentleman did not, because there were no stamps. There seems to be some reference to a change in 2015. I am not aware of what that change might have been. If any of the witnesses are, they might be able to enlighten me.

The INHFA mentioned specifically, as perhaps did the ICMSA, some of the environmental schemes. I can definitely see the logic of the schemes as they serve a number of purposes, including ensuring farmers are properly supported and increasing the uptake of environmental schemes. Will the witnesses give us a rough outline of what somebody might get under these schemes? I presume it is per acre rather than per head. I ask the witnesses to give us a sense of what would be in question.

I will not admit to having received many cases with regard to farm assist but something that does come up is the relatively low amount of disregards available compared to other payments. I had a case of somebody whose wife's travel expenses were taken into account. This may have been resolved in the end but these travel expenses were initially taken into account as income, whereas they were a legitimate expense of her employment. Typically for most social welfare payments they might not taken into account. My main questions are on the stamps in terms of pension contributions, whether there is an issue with awareness, and typically how much a farmer can expect from the environmental schemes. I am sure it varies depending on the type of farming and the type of land. Typically what are we speaking about in terms of the amount of money that will be involved next year?