Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support this important amendment. Our flagship industry is the agricultural economy. I am now old enough to remember a number of recessions and each time it was the farming sector that took us through. When the farmers are doing well, they spend money locally. They spend it with local suppliers and on local equipment. We cannot just pay lip service to the problem of income volatility and we should formulate some balancing scheme for the good and bad years. We need some equalisation with respect to taxation. Farmers may be able to pay in advance, which may not be a good idea, or pay when they are able to pay. They always pay.

They have no choice but to pay because they are levied with punitive interest and penalties. On the other hand, when the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed stands up and explains that a computer glitch is delaying the payments or blames human error the farmer then has to wait. He gets no interest, and he owes his suppliers money. He has no way of charging penalties. It is a one-way system, and it is terribly unfair. Farmers make a large amount of investment. Nothing is happening in terms of house building in rural Ireland, or anywhere else outside the Red Cow. That is clear from this budget. For all the infrastucture investment only a tiny bit went into Kildare. The rest of the country is forgotten about.

The only people who have invested anything in the last number of years are the farmers, especially the younger farmers and dairy farmers. They have made huge investments. The banks have lent them the money. Two different banks held public meetings in my town - one of which we own almost 100% of - and they shovelled out the money to young farmers. It frightens me. I have a business that was a beneficiary. The young farmers always pay as well. They have made massive investments to double and triple their herds, lease land for 20 years and build new buildings. They are very important for the concrete industry, the construction industry and for tradesmen. Planning permission has been sought by many of them for tunnels under the roads. The county council cannot do them but the farmers can do them. The council cannot repair bridges but the farmers can get permission to close a road and put down an underpass. They can show the council how to do it. These are the people who put their shoulder to the wheel and took out those loans. Many of them have young families, who married and are setting out in life. They keep the last vestiges of rural Ireland alive. Everything else has been taken away from it.

There was a big story yesterday concerning a €30 million investment in An Post, in the form of a loan. One might think we were getting a gift. These people did not ask for any gifts. All they want is fair play and to be allowed to carry our their business with some supports. There is a spin-off of employment for the industries that service them. They pay back their loans, but they want to be able to pay their taxes when they are able to pay. They do not want to evade taxes, but want to put money away for the difficult years because it is a very volatile industry. Look, for example, at the weather patterns, which are completely upside down. The farmers have to have certainty. After the harvest this year the grain prices are appalling, the beef prices are very uncertain, and the milk, thankfully, was better. We had three or four terribly lean years, and these farmers have huge bills all the time. They always pay their bills. When these farmers try to buy a bit of land with the intention of expanding by increasing the number of cows they have to stay viable, they have no chance. It is certainly the case in my county anyway, with the home-grown vulture fund which the Minister refuses to deal with. There is the equine industry fund and the money from Japan and China, but the local man has to borrow from the bank to match that. Many of them have been put to huge expense. The Minister will not tackle that issue either.

Deputy Fitzmaurice and I had an amendment which would have meant that vulture funds who buy land would have to pay a larger stamp duty. Anything more than 500 acres or 750 acres is not a farm any more but a large business. They are investing money but we do not know where the money comes from or how long it will stay. The young farmer and the family farmer must be supported. They are the backbone of this country and have got us out of many a recession. When they do something they spend and they pay. They borrow to do this.

It is a vital industry. As Deputy Cahill said, we only have agriculture and tourism. There is nothing else. We do not get factories or jobs; the Government will not give them to us. We are not even allowed to build houses now. Farming is so onerous now. It is so onerous to get planning. Not only do the planners want to know how long farmers have been farming, or if a farmer was born and reared there, but also if they were conceived on the farm. That is what planning wants now. The regulations are just mad. The Government cannot build houses. The young farmers will build their own with a borrowing, but they cannot get planning. The will is not there to allow rural Ireland the oxygen to survive. The Government is cutting off the oxygen and strangling it.

The rural independent group, in our budget submission, had lobbied that the Government would look at some sort of equalisation system whereby farmers could pay in the good years instead of the bad years. The farmers are not saying that they will not pay. They will pay when they are able to pay. They have to pay all of their suppliers, otherwise the suppliers would not work with them. The service people would not work with the farmers if they were not paying them, but they always pay, unless something unforeseen happens. There is also the TB racket and the other rackets to contend with. The most unfair part of it all is the inordinate delays in the GLAS payments due to what we are told was a computer glitch or incorrect information being fed into the computer. If anyone else is behind in paying the Revenue they face punitive penalties and interests, and there is no choice but to pay them.

I hope that this will be pushed to a vote and that the Government will be forced to change it, because it is for the good of all of Ireland. When rural Ireland is going well there is a spin-off, because the farming community all come to the towns and cities and spend money, whether it be for a match, for education or for shopping for Christmas. They all contribute to the economy.

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