Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I welcome all the various organisations here today. I will start with Irish Rural Link. I come from the community voluntary sector and have been involved in community organisations all my life. Irish Rural Link often came to us on different issues along with Muintir na Tíre and other organisations to fight for the smaller people in society. Last week, Deputy Healy-Rae and I attended the event in the RDS on community banking. Will the witnesses from Irish Rural Link elaborate on that? There is concern about how credit unions in a village will survive if community banking is set up a in post office, which would be our thinking regarding the way forward. I hope that is what the witnesses are thinking.

I have a bit of criticism. We all get criticism, including ourselves. It relates to the dismantling of Leader, which I will discuss with Forum Connemara in a minute and about which little was said by groups like those before us. It will lead to the ruination of rural Ireland. I do not know what the plan is. If it was not broken, why did they go fixing it? Unfortunately, they are fixing it and it is becoming more broken. It is a complete shambles. That should have been an area for which Irish Rural Link and Muintir na Tíre should have stood up very strongly and made their voices heard. I am worried that it is too late now.

I am also worried about what the Chairman said about the rural social scheme. Again, community employment schemes, Tús and the rural social scheme are bread and butter in rural Ireland and are being looked at and changed. They are making a complete hames of this. They are now talking about those under the age of 25 not being allowed into the rural social scheme. Six years is the maximum. I know some people who have been on that scheme for ten or 11 years and are absolutely delighted. It provided bread and butter for low-income farmers and fishermen, so that is an issue that should be taken up strongly. JobPath is a farce. People who are on social welfare are nearly treated like slaves.

They come into towns and villages a few days a week trying to sign up to this while a UK company makes a profit out of trying to get them a job. That is outrageous carry on. They might be available to work on some community employment, Tús or rural social scheme but they are not allowed to do so once they have been called up for JobPath. This needs to be discussed. The revelation concerning the rural social scheme must be looked.

I am a small farmer. I welcome representatives from Teagasc. The biggest problem with Irish agriculture is that while there is not a huge number of them, there are farmers who are getting a single farm payment of €150,000. That has been stood over and has not been corrected. Some farmers who are earning a single farm payment of €2,500 have been further hit with severe penalties in recent years because of scrub and rock on their land. We come from rural Ireland. For the love of God, what negotiator went out to Europe and could not negotiate about scrub and rock on farms? The funding should have been given to those farmers to survive. I am very critical of many organisations that did not support the smaller farmer. While I do not believe the farmer getting a payment of €150,000 should be brought down to the level of somebody getting €2,000 or €3,000, because we accept that they are larger farmers, their payment should be brought down to some level where money would be given to the smaller man to bring him up to some natural level for his survival.

Deputy Healy-Rae spoke about farmers living on their own and the flight from the land. There is flight from the land and there will be continued flight from the land. If Teagasc, the IFA and the Irish Cattle & Sheep Farmers Association are not going to fight for farmers, who in the name of God will fight for them? These issues need to be looked at. I love to think that I could live on my own but I known damn well that if I depended on a living from my own farm, my family would starve. It is not possible. We are being steered towards the single farm payment, farm assist and other payments. They are being scrutinised so that if a farmer sells a few extra animals one year, he or she is penalised. People come into my constituency office who are losing €50, €60 or €70 per week. This is bread and butter for them and they are very much on the borderline. They have bills and face a major struggle.

I suppose I am running out of time.