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

I thank Deputy Fitzmaurice for raising this issue. He will get a written response which will include further details but I will try to address some of the issues he is raising now. Some of the concerns are about something that is not proposed. It is true that this is quite a complex scheme. We are committing €300 million to the suckler herd. I want to give a strong statement from Government in the rural development programme that the suckler herd really matters. Tens of thousands of farm families, in every constituency and parish in the country, are deriving an income from suckler beef and we want to keep them there.

We also want to use the supports that we will be giving through this scheme to ensure that we improve the genetics and breeding performance of the herd. We also want to improve the quality of the herd so that animals grow faster, have better confirmation and improve their ease of calving and temperament and so on. We will be making a positive contribution from an emissions and climate change point of view because animals will be growing faster and producing meat more efficiently. We will also be helping farmers to become more profitable by producing better bred beef.

I am sure there are examples of a two star bull that has had a better progeny than a four star bull. However, on average, the more stars a bull has, the better the progeny that comes from that animal. That is the point of a star rating system. The same applies to suckler cows. The better the genetics, the increased likelihood of producing better animals from that herd. This is the purpose of the scheme.

There is a reason for asking people to sign up to a six year contract. This is an area based scheme under the rural development programme. Farmers are required to buy into the scheme for a certain number of years, as is the case when joining the GLAS scheme, and there are consequences if they pull out. The reason we need a six year commitment is that if we are going to collect DNA data in the first couple of years, it will only be in the second half of the scheme that we will see the genetic improvements that come from the collected data.

This is not a scheme that is simply pumping €95 per calved cow, for the first ten, and €80 per animal after that to support suckler farm income. It does that, but there are requirements and these requirements are not overly expensive. The carbon calculator that is being asked of farmers as part of the terms and conditions and the training that farmers need to undertake to understand how they can best use the genomic information that they get back from ICBF will both be paid for separately. The €30 that it costs to take a genomic sample last year is likely to be significantly cheaper this year because the numbers involved will be significantly higher, we will benefit from economies of scale and we will have a competitive process to get the price down further from where it was last year.

Farmers have nothing of which to be frightened in this scheme. If something dramatic happens on the farm and a farmer is forced out of the scheme during the six year period, the rules around force majeurewill apply. If someone dies on the farm or something like that, we will take that into account. However, we need this to be a six year commitment by farmers. We are contributing more than €53 million a year into the suckler beef sector. That is €300 million in total, of which more than half is being paid by the European Union. This is being done on the basis of a climate change measure, so that we can produce suckler beef more efficiently and so that there will be a lower carbon footprint in our beef herd. It will also mean more profitable beef production.

All of the things we have designed in this scheme are concerned with helping farmers to become more efficient and profitable and to produce better herds based on better breeding programmes. We are training farmers to use the scientific genomic data that we will collect from their herds, matched with the performance data farmers will provide, to help them do that. This is a win-win situation for everyone. It is not an attempt to capture farmers or tie them into things that they do not want to do. It is about working with farmers, getting information from them and giving it back to them in a form that with training results in better breeding programmes in our suckler beef herd.

If there is one thing I know since becoming Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine it is that the difference between the top performing suckler herds and the bottom performing suckler herds is an absolute chasm at the moment. Deputies who understand agriculture will understand this fact. We must help everyone move into a more efficient way of producing beef, which is more profitable for them and which is more climate efficient for us in terms of the targets we have to meet in agriculture. This is the purpose of the scheme. We will pay people to be part of that journey.

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