Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

I am pleased to contribute to this important debate on agriculture. I have already made numerous comments and suggestions over the years in this regard. I have made many suggestions in this House that some of the farming organisations did not like, but I knew I was correct and am glad I was vindicated in the viewpoint I often articulated in the House in this regard.

I wish to particularly comment during this debate on the number of reductions in vital expenditure areas proposed by the Minister. When implemented, these will have significant and profound adverse effects on the farming community. I recall as a young student in UCD in 1974 that up to 325,000 people in Ireland were classified as farmers and approximately 0.5% of the land became available for transfer through sale and-or inheritance. We have witnessed in the past few decades a virtual decimation of the number of farmers. If things keep going as they have gone over the past 30 years, we will have only approximately 30,000 full-time farmers by 2016.

I also recall the fact that farmers were not generally transferring lands inter vivos at farm level. They were passed on upon the death of the landholder through inheritance by the instrument of the will. There was then the advent of two very important and effective social change instruments, namely, the early retirement scheme and installation aid scheme. These schemes were facilitative in nature, and with the addition of some monetary rewards, they altered the landscape for the earlier transfer of farms within or outside the family while still retaining the integrity of same.

The payment under the scheme is €15,000, it used to be £5,000 and then it increased to £7,500. That payment was extremely useful and of great assistance to young farmers who in order to benefit had to have attained certain educational qualifications. The grant helped defray some of the legal costs associated with the lease or transfer involved. These were important schemes in speeding up the transfer of farms leading to an increase in productivity ultimately, and the retaining of another young person on the land, thereby arresting the drain or depletion in the number of farmers, which is important in terms of the social fabric and infrastructure of rural Ireland, which is under threat.

From the foregoing perspective it makes eminent sense, both from a financial and social standpoint, to ensure that those schemes are restored and the suspensions proposed by the Government lifted. The installation aid grant of €15,000 pales into insignificance when it is compared with the cost of generating an IDA-backed job.

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