Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)

I invite the Minister to take a look at his response in his spare time because he spends five minutes praising the scheme and gives the information requested in the question in the last 30 seconds.

The highly-geared construction industry, in 2006, achieved something like 80,000 house units and we are expecting the agricultural construction sector to meet 40,000 applications under the farm waste management scheme in something like an 18 month period. There is no way that deadline can be met. Either thousands of farmers will lose out in terms of their financial entitlements under the scheme, or shortcuts will be taken. As the former Minister of State with responsibility for health and safety, I am sure Deputy Killeen is aware of the dangers from on-farm accidents as well as accidents in the construction industry.

I do not want to see, at the end of this year, farmers being exposed to dangers because of deadlines that are beyond their capacity and that of their agricultural contractors. I implore the Minister of State to revisit this deadline before it is too late. This sector simply does not have the capacity to deliver on that deadline — in terms of the ordering of galvanise, cubicles, slatted units, shuttering etc. It simply is not possible to achieve the deadline at the end of this year. I implore the Minister of State to recognise the problem at this early date and negotiate a realistic extension of the deadline.

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