Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I spoke last night to a person who has drawn hay and straw from the south for 30 years. He told me that it costs €40 for one bale at the moment. Farmers cannot afford that. I know that the Minister said that he front-loaded payments to help these people, but all that money is already spoken for. At the moment the man is having difficulty getting this hay because some of the people that have this are holding out for the springtime. This is a major problem. There was an underspend of €33 million on the rural development programme in 2014, and it was the same in 2015 and 2016. I suggest that some of that money could be used to help these people. It should be a grant payment. We should not repeat what was done before, when hay was imported from England and France which was pure junk. The animals starved. Much of that fodder was not eaten and it was wasted.

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