Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in and compliment them on the fantastic work they do. We know farmers are self-employed. When one is self-employed, there is a lot of pressure. What needs to be looked at to help farmers and to help with their mental health issues is to simplify issues for farmers instead of complicating them. I do not know what influence the witnesses can have on this or how much they can do but that is what they should try to preach because that is important. We know farmers have enough to do without having to do all the paperwork as well. Red tape and criteria are getting a lot of farmers down. Another issue is payments being made on time. We are all well aware of the costs in farming nowadays. Farmers are self-employed and payments do not go in too often but it would help if payments were on time. Today, a farmer contacted me who is in his second year of waiting for ACRES payments and still has not received any. If issues such as this could be dealt with and sorted, it would help farmers' mental health in a major way. I thank the witnesses for coming today.