Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

For the information of the House - and I have mentioned this privately to Deputy Crawford - within the last two weeks I met with the chief agricultural advisers of all the main banks, as well as their support staff. I outlined the position regarding the roll-out of these schemes, particular for poultry and pigs. I asked that the relevant credit be put in place to ensure that people who need to upgrade their systems to remain in business will be able to do so. Funding should be put in place to allow them to do that. I think they accepted the point that it is a worthwhile investment and that a good financial package is coming from our point of view as well. I have asked them to give fair and urgent consideration to ensuring that farmers can avail of those two schemes.

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