Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)

I am disappointed with and annoyed by the tenor of the Government amendment to the motion. If the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Deputy Smith, wishes to engage in a debate on the CAP health check, the proposals to take an additional 5% in modulation fees from single farm payments or his abject failure, in the aftermath of that health check, to deal with the sheep farmers who have been camped outside his Department for a number of days, I will facilitate him. However, when I table a motion relating to disadvantaged area payments, installation aid and the early retirement scheme, I expect him either to defend the decisions he has made or, preferably, to support my call for the reintroduction of the schemes and payments to which I refer. The lengthy Government amendment to the motion does not once refer to installation aid or the early retirement scheme. This is typical of an Administration that makes decisions over which it is afraid to stand or for which it does not want to be accountable in the House.

Tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs each week. Houses are being repossessed in unprecedented numbers. People's job prospects have nose-dived and emigration is back on the agenda for many younger individuals. Banks are squeezing the life out of small businesses and multinational companies are relocating to low cost economies.

Fine Gael is only too well aware of the difficulties facing the economy. If confirmation in this regard is needed, people need only consult the Exchequer figures published today. Fine Gael is also aware that difficult choices must be made, that spending must reflect value for money and that waste must be eliminated. For many years, ours has been the lone voice on this side of the House to preach caution and frugality with taxpayers' money. As a result of Government recklessness, probably best summarised by the Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, describing the €50 million wasted on e-voting machines as "small change", we will be obliged to cope with the difficulties we now face.

The Government's ineptitude in managing the economy through the boom years is matched only by its inability to chart a clear course for recovery. Fine Gael has published a clear and alternative budgetary strategy that gives us the scope to reverse the Government's proposals in respect of agriculture. This strategy includes a pay freeze for those in the public sector who earn over €50,000; reform of the public sector so that the many decent people who work within that sector will have the shackles of bureaucracy removed, thereby allowing them to reach their true potential; a €1.5 billion levy on the banks; and a windfall carbon tax on energy generators. These are but some of the alternatives Fine Gael has put forward.

I recently called for rationalisation of the myriad agencies involved in policing food safety and labelling. The Government's efforts to secure changes to our labelling legislation at EU level have met with abject failure. At present, officials from the Departments of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and Health and Children, the Health Service Executive and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and local authority staff are all employed in this area. Savings could be made if this confusion and duplication were tackled and if responsibility for this matter lay solely with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

I wish to call for further savings in the area of laboratory services to the State. At present, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the regional fisheries boards, the Environmental Protection Agency, local authorities and possibly others provide such laboratory services. There should be a single State laboratory service, providing analysis and testing to these various bodies and thereby eliminating the duplication that leads to a substantial cost for the taxpayer. My proposal in this regard does not include hospital-based laboratory services.

Farmers have never shirked their patriotic duty. However, their steadfastness in this regard should not be confused with their being a soft touch in the context of attempts to shore up the position following the Government's mismanagement of the public finances. No other sector has been asked to accept cuts of the magnitude envisaged in respect of agriculture. It is typical of the budget that the most vulnerable in the farming community are being targeted. I refer here to young farmers in need of assistance, their older counterparts seeking to avail of the early retirement scheme and those eking out a living on marginal land in marginal enterprises. Is this surprising? No. It has all the hallmarks of a Government that tried to take medical cards from those over 70 years of age, to take entitlements from those with disabilities who are over 16 years of age and which denies 12 year old girls life-saving cancer vaccinations. Farmers will shoulder their fair share of the pain — no more and no less.

Those in farming currently face enormous challenges. World Trade Organisation negotiations again loom large on the horizon. Conflicting signals from Europe regarding the true value of food security and the highest standards of production and environmental care make it imperative that we attract the best and brightest into our agriculture industry. In such challenging times, the Government, at the stroke of a pen, suspended the scheme of installation aid. At the same time, this Administration and its agencies are travelling the globe and seeking to attract foreign inward investment at a multiple of the cost per job that obtains in respect of the scheme of installation aid. What signal does this send to the industry and, in particular, to those students who flocked to our agricultural colleges in recent years? The signal it sends is that they are second class citizens and that we value jobs in industry more than those in agriculture. Shame on the Minister for turning his back on our indigenous sector.

I previously referred to the likelihood of a successful legal challenge, based on the principle of legitimate expectation, to the decision to suspend the scheme. I predict that this suspension will be successfully challenged in the courts and will end up costing the State more than the meagre cost — in the region of €4.3 million — of restoring the scheme.

People in farming are crying out for a resolution. Some 8% of farm holdings are owned or managed by those under 35 years of age. There is a definite need for new blood during this most challenging time for agriculture. One of my constituents, an elderly gentleman farmer, died earlier this year. His son, who had completed his green certificate, gave up a well-paid job outside the agriculture sector to take over the family farm. The elderly individual had, before his death and under the farm waste management scheme, embarked on a major development of his property. He had received approval for this and it is hoped the work will be completed before the end of December. Farmers in Northern Ireland will not be obliged to complete works by that date because they obtained an extension. Such an extension was never sought for farmers in this jurisdiction.

Due to the fact that matters relating to the transfer of ownership of the farm holding to which I refer have been delayed by probate, the late farmer's wife will no longer be entitled to early retirement scheme payments and her son will not receive payments under the scheme of installation aid. This is notwithstanding the fact that much of the investment made in the farm was contingent upon the funding they hoped to secure under these schemes. What does the Minister propose to do in respect of this and the many similar cases that have been documented by the IFA, Macra na Feirme and other organisations, details in respect of which have been presented to the Department?

In conjunction with stamp duty exemption and installation aid, the scheme of early retirement was the third policy initiative to encourage land mobility. This scheme is co-funded by Europe and is, in the case of most farm families, inextricably linked with installation aid. All over the country family farm settlements, retirement plans, financial planning for dependant children — years of careful planning — have been thrown into disarray for the sake of a meagre €9.3 million. What does "suspend" mean? When will the scheme be reinstated? What is to become of those "installed" on their farms in the interim and who may remain so installed for more than 12 months before the scheme is reinstated? Will they be disqualified from benefit? What of those who lose out under the ten year provision of the early retirement scheme? Will they be compensated at the other end by access to the early retirement scheme post-66 years of age? At a time when a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the industry from the World Trade negotiations, and from Europe, it is totally unacceptable to have uncertainty on such critical matters fuelled by one's own Government.

The suspension of both of these schemes at such a critical juncture in our economic history clearly highlights the Government's thinking on the capacity of the sector to contribute to revitalising the economy. On the contrary, we in Fine Gael believe that now is the time to realise the true potential of our greatest indigenous industry. Now is the time to recognise that this is an industry for the long haul, contributing both socially and economically, and whose true potential in terms of the food industry has never been truly recognised and exploited. It is a time for investment, research, development and marketing. It is not a time for a Minister in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to be "doing time".

Since the budget, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has repeatedly used the line of scarce resources and of focusing investment on the "productive capacity of the agri-food sector". It is clear that this statement, in the context of disadvantage area payments, is a watershed in Fianna Fáil policy on agriculture. Through this savage cutback, up to 15% of total income in some cases, and worse when coupled with the slashing of payments under the suckler cow scheme, Fianna Fáil is turning its back on farmers on marginal lands engaged primarily in the sheep and cattle business, which are themselves marginal enterprises.

Beef farmers in the west with suckler cow herds are the suppliers of cattle to those on better lands and involved in the cattle finishing business. This cutback will drive existing part-time farmers out of business and drive those struggling to remain full-time in the business to seek off-farm employment to supplement their incomes. In today's climate, where are they to go for off-farm incomes? What will happen in reality is that these farmers will turn to the State and the farm assist payment. It would be far better to spend that money under the disadvantaged areas payment scheme. This cutback will affect 35,000 farmers, many of them in the west and many of whom have been Fianna Fáil supporters since the foundation of the State. Fianna Fáil is showing clear signs of a party too long in power, too far removed from reality and too arrogant to listen to ordinary people.

See this speech in context