Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

This will reduce the incentive to source these fuels in Northern Ireland where no excise is applied. This measure will cost €24 million in a full year.

Supporting Farming and Rural Economy

A competitive farming sector is the key to developing a sustainable rural community. It is important that as farmers are increasingly freed from the constraints of production quota and price supports, they be given the necessary assistance to enable them to invest and innovate and by so doing to be in a better position to compete in an increasingly globalised market for farming produce. It is also important that such assistance is prioritised to young farmers and to those farmers who have risen to the challenges posed by changes arising from the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and the World Trade Organisation negotiations.

The package of rural development measures recently agreed with the farming organisations as part of Towards 2016 has been widely welcomed. It means that Government support for farming will more than double in the next rural development period compared to the present one.

This is a time of great change in farming. New schemes of aid for restructuring in the food processing sector, while not directly involving farmers, provide an essential underpinning to adapting our agriculture and food sector to the new realities in EU and world farming.

Increases of 15% in forestry premiums and 17% in REPS payments, as well as substantial support for on-farm investment to help meet the requirements of the nitrates directive, reflect our growing concerns about the environment and our awareness of the important role that farmers now play in protecting our environment.

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