Declan Breathnach (Louth, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have listened intently to the debate but I will not repeat what others have said, as the Minister is already aware of those matters. The concerns of the 140,000 farming families who are listening to us need to be met. As we have heard, overall farm incomes are down by 9%. It is unsustainable to expect primary producers to expand when they are not making money.

All farmers want a fair price and mechanisms need to be found to bring stability to the marketplace. The least the Department can and should do is to ensure that payments for various schemes are made on time. There is little sense in having farmers who can get credit or overdrafts from banks forking out their hard-earned income streams on interest to banks. A classic example is the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS II. Some nine months after opening, approvals have not been made for the vast majority of farmers who have applied for the scheme. The fact that the IT system is not operational clearly shows that farmers were sold a pig in a poke. Given the timescales of the grant availability, they again find themselves with serious cashflow difficulties.

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government should get their act together on rural roads. Poor investment in local and tertiary roads is having a serious impact on agricultural communities. Local improvement schemes should recommence, including ring-fenced investment by the Department. We should insist that a percentage of all road moneys to local authorities is spent on tertiary roads. For the past five years, no money has been spent on local improvement schemes, LIS, community improvement schemes, CIS or tertiary roads in the communities I represent. This is a case of people who rely on tertiary roads being treated as third-class citizens, although they pay taxes like everyone else. I ask both Ministers to take this matter in hand.

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