Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

There has been serious inflation in prices. This 23% or 13.5% VAT rate, and it is 23% for most of this stuff, is now 23% of what is now a much bigger base figure for the actual product. These numbers are going to fluctuate and change anyway. I asked a simple question. I am a farmer. I am not in dairy, but if I were and I had bought a milk tank in October 2021 and put it into my existing shed, I would have got the VAT amount back - yes or no? If I bought the same milk tank to put into the same shed in October 2023, though, I would not have got the VAT back - yes or no? I know the answers are "Yes" to the first question and "No" to the second one. Why is this the case? What changed?

If we are in denial that something has changed, we are not going to solve the problem. We are wasting time going to meet the farmers or the farm organisation bodies, because we can never get a solution to a problem that does not exist. The Revenue is in denial about something having changed and there being a problem. As the Cathaoirleach, Deputy Fitzmaurice and everybody here has said, our inboxes are full of emails from farmers and our clinics are full of farmers who have had a problem only since last summer. This did not just occur overnight. Something happened to make this happen.