Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As this is a fairly broad question, I will address the issues that might be most pertinent. There has been some criticism since the announcement of the budget that we have targeted certain schemes unfairly and I want to give the Deputy the rationale for why we did what we did. I will deal with the beef sector first.

For the past five years we have had a suckler cow welfare scheme which has been a popular and extremely good scheme. It has significantly improved the welfare standards within the suckler herd and it has provided very valuable data around breeding programmes and fertility within herds to Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, ICBF, which is very useful for planning for the future, breeding programmes and so on. That was a five year scheme and this is the fifth year of it. It has come to an end. I had signalled that I would not be able to continue the suckler cow welfare scheme indefinitely into the future because we do not have the money to do it and it has come to the end of its five year term. I would have had to have put a new scheme in place and get approval from Brussels for that. Instead we decided to put in place a smaller, more targeted scheme to replace the suckler scheme for the moment, which will cost us approximately €10 million a year and which will pay farmers €20 rather than €40 an animal. We are asking them to continue to supply the kind of data on breeding and fertility they previously would have been providing to the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, ICBF. We are asking new entrants also to provide that data for that money.

It is important to say in terms of the beef sector, because it is misunderstood, that next year we will spend almost as much on the beef sector as we spent this year. This year we will spend €25 million on the suckler cow welfare scheme in addition to approximately €2 million connected to beef discussion groups which started half way through the year. Next year we will spend €10 million on this new scheme. We will spend €10 million on the existing suckler cow welfare scheme where the payments will be paid next year in respect of calves that were born in the second half of the year, and we will spend €5 million on beef discussion groups on this sector next year. That is €25 million that will be spent on suckler beef next year which is not a significant difference from what was spent on that sector this year, although I accept the make-up and design of those payments are different. I will address one or two of the other sectors related to the sheep sector and DAS payments when I get an opportunity to do so later.

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