Mr. John Joe Fitzgerald:

Looking at the farm assist scheme and everything, there is no incentive. People are stuck in poverty and there is no way to get out of it. If the €20,000 threshold was increased to €50,000, it would give people the opportunity to build a bit of money and to hold onto it going into their old age. On what the Deputy said earlier about old people living in houses, I saw someone near my place who was farming and working in a hospital all her life and she was always saving for the nursing home. At the end she had €200,000 or €300,000 in the bank and when she went into the nursing home, she only lived for about two months and she was starving all along. She would not buy herself a pair of shoes or anything else with it.

On the farm assist, if someone has five children and it is coming up to Christmas, especially nowadays, the Christmas bill is almost €1,000 per child with the gadgets they have nowadays. It is very hard to keep the children happy if people are living on the farm assist scheme, unless they have some savings or something. While we talk about the farmer, we need to talk about the farm family. What affects the farmer, affects the whole family.