Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for raising points on a wide range of topics. I agree with his sentiment of wanting to work together. I want to work with the members of the committee. We will have many ups and downs and many issues that will be challenging for the sector, but we will meet them head-on and try to deal with them as best we can. The Deputy compared ACRES to fixing broken machinery and said that if something is broken it should be fixed. The challenge with ACRES is that more than one fix was needed. There were individual interventions needed across a range of cohorts. To go back to the Deputy's analogy, a number of things were broken in the machine. We are fixing one thing at a time, but fixing it permanently so that it does not come back again. I recognise that it is hugely frustrating for those impacted but, in terms of the interim payment, I know that request was made this year. I did not want to have any intervention this year. When we were up to a scale that we had built up momentum and were doing weekly payment runs, I did not want anything that would undermine the payment of the balancing payment to the 45,000 farmers who were not affected. We have been in the space of working through the cohorts and paying farmers on a weekly basis. Of the cohort of 5,300, a total of 1,100 of which are from 2023, when we resolve those in the coming weeks, they will get knocked off the 2024 list as well because they are all in the one and being counted as double. We are getting there and making progress. The commitment I gave is that those solutions are permanent.

Regarding TB, farmers have an option to take the book value at the time.

They are compensated at the value of the animal on the date of its reactor - I will come back to Deputy Aird as well - and there is a maximum amount on that. However, if we wait for months for a valuation, we have seen an increase in the price of beef, which has been a challenge.

In response to the points the Cathaoirleach and Deputy Aird made about compensation, my abiding determination is to make sure fewer farmers are in this position and that those farmers have a way out of the mess they are in. We could spend all day talking about compensation and individual measures. The points the members made are valid, but they will not resolve the problem. I am determined that we fix this problem once and for all.