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

We are trying to be as helpful as we can to the pig sector in particular. What is being asked of farmers here is to move from an intensive, essentially, tethered system for sows to loose housing for breeding sows, which is a welfare issue. This is not before time, it should have happened years ago. In some countries in the European Union it did happen years ago but the capital investment required to do that is significant for many farmers at a time when those in the pig industry has had a pretty tough few years in terms of the price of feed in particular and some margins have been very tight. We are trying to be as helpful as we can by maximising the grant aid and we have increased it as I outlined. If there are other issues around planning or approvals in terms of engineering certificates or whatever that are a blockage in the system, perhaps the Deputy could give me the details of those and we can talk about the matter afterwards, but I would be anxious to try to facilitate this because we are trying to keep as many pig farmers in business as we can. We will lose some because of these changes but I hope it will be a very small number because this is an industry we want to grow and expand. Perhaps the Deputy could give me some details on this and I assure him we will follow up on it.

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