Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I would like the Minister for Finance to outline the economic rationale or strategy that underpins this proposal. The chief executive of Allied Irish Banks has emphasised in the bank's various public advertisements that it is important to enable cash and credit to flow through the economy. He has appealed to people and organisations, including Government Departments, to try to pay their bills on time. He has suggested that payment periods could be reduced to ten or 20 days. He has said that people could bring forward payments on account. If we could get more money circulating in the economy, we could improve confidence and develop a sense that business is resuming.

I find the Minister's proposal difficult to understand. Payments like this tend to circulate in a rural economy, thereby improving the circulation of money, unless people use them to go on foreign holidays, which I do not think the farmers in this instance will do. I do not understand why this payment was singled out in the totality of things. If the Minister for Finance decided that payments to consultants who provide services to Government Departments were to be put on the long finger for two or three years, he might get quite a sympathetic hearing in this Chamber. I refer, for example, to the officials who were involved in projects like the electronic voting machines and the PPARS system. I wonder why payments to farmers were singled out as being worthy of delay. The Minister is aware that during the boom years, many farmers, and their children who stood to inherit their farms, took up off-farm employment in the construction industry. That source of primary or secondary income for many farmers and farm families has dried up. I am sure the Minister understands that the supply of one-off housing projects in certain countries is drying up. It seems strange, from an economic strategy perspective, that the Minister introduced restrictions on the scheme prior to last year's budget and, more recently, introduced restrictions on payments under the scheme. The impact of those restrictions on the flow of credit is exactly what we do not want at this time. Can the Minister explain the economic rationale for this measure? I certainly do not understand it.

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