Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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We are here to seek the committee's the approval of the committee for additional funding for the Department. Deputy McConalogue alluded to an underspend. On the contrary, we will require more money to keep the show on the road. We have secured that agreement from the Department of Finance and now seek ratification for that by the committee, which was the case in 2018. For two successive years we are spending more than we were originally allocated rather than underspending.

There have been years the Department has underspent and overspent. The notion that a Department can land right on the button when it comes to a budget of such magnitude does not take account of the many variables that happen. Sometimes we get appropriations-in-aid back early but sometimes they are delayed and, therefore, go into the next year. Sometimes we have new schemes for which we must find funding. A host of variables have an impact but we always endeavour that we issue as much money as possible to farmers, and to do that this year, we require additional funds, as we did last year.

I want to deal with a number of common themes, the first of which relates to the conditionality of BEAM. The beef sector has come through a very difficult time and, in many respects, it continues. The objective was to get funding from the Commission and the Exchequer to devise a scheme that would pay farmers as quickly as possible but that comes with terms and conditions. Regarding what Deputy Penrose said, the EU Commission is responsible for the implementing regulation. The following conditionality is stitched into the EU's regulation:

The measures taken by Ireland shall be aimed at reducing production or restructuring the beef and veal sector and one or more of the following objectives: (a) implementation of quality schemes in the beef and veal sector or projects aiming at promoting quality and value added;

(b) boosting market diversification; and

(c) protecting and improving the farmers’ environmental, climate and economic sustainability.

We did not have a choice because we had one of three options that "shall be aimed at reducing production or restructuring the beef and veal sector". We were faced with the choice in terms of complying with that rejecting the aid or coming up with an ingenuous way to enable farmers to qualify. I did not want to have a conditionality attached where there was a straight requirement for a head count reduction. We assessed whether there was room for manoeuvre when negotiating the organics load. That is the way we went about it and we opted for a 5% reduction. That was the best way to deal with a difficult hand of cards. There was conditionality attached to the funding, as there always is for any scheme of exceptional aid. Some people felt hard done by and have left the scheme as a consequence. Of just under 35,000 applicants, approximately 500 people have left so there is a liability in the region of €78 million. It was a demand-led scheme.

Deputy Cahill mentioned that dealers engineered their mart sales to be subsequently sold on using another herd number. That claim flies in the face of the facts. In late summer, the scheme was introduced for cattle that been sold prior to last May so the dealers could not have known, as they sold the cattle, that it would be appropriate to buy them using a dealer's herd number and sell them using another herd number. That is simply fictitious and it is not the case.