Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)

There were 17,000 applicants. Reckoning an average payment of approximately €33,000 would have told the Minister what his Department Estimate required.

The Minister is in Cabinet and he and his colleagues are contemplating recapitalising the banks. Payment of the farm waste management scheme will recapitalise the banks, indirectly. I assure him that 99% of payments he will make out will go into banks.

Let us get down to brass tacks. I have had individual farmers sit opposite me with their wives, in tears because they did not have money to put bread on the table. The Minister should look at the range of other issues in which he is failing to make payments, in REPS and the farm investment scheme, in reduced payments in the suckler cow and the disadvantaged area schemes. The Minister has been an unmitigated disaster.

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