Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister will be aware of Longford IFA's innovative roadside billboard campaign at the moment to promote farm families and to highlight the value of local food production. The Minister will have seen the billboards as he went through Longford on his way home to Donegal. The campaign is promoted by the local IFA chairman, Gavin White. The posters emphasise the diversity of the sector in County Longford with beef, sheep, chicken, tillage and egg producers all featuring prominently. A number of the posters feature local farm families and serve to remind us, the consumers, that local farm families, farmers, neighbours and friends, depend very much on the choices we make when we go into our supermarkets. Every Christmas, the vegan movement runs its poster campaigns, so it is great and reassuring to see local farmers coming together and telling their own story, which is a compelling story. I hope the Longford initiative can be replicated in other counties. There is certainly a sense of pride for us in Longford as we pass by the posters on the road. We can see the Waters family from Gowlan in Killashee who produce our milk, and the O'Halleran's at Loughill in Keenagh, who produce our free range eggs. These are our food producers. These are our neighbours and our friends. For us the consumers there is an instant and recognisable connection.

I want to raise the case of a Newtowncashel sheep farming family, the details of which I forwarded to the Minister earlier today. They applied for the sheep welfare scheme when it opened in 2017. They duly received the action book and commenced recording the actions necessary to satisfy the terms of the scheme. They chose scanning and foetal egg counting as their two targeted actions. They duly carried out the scanning of the ewes completely but for various reasons they failed to get the egg count completed. They correctly assumed that they would not qualify for the 2017 scheme as they had broken the terms. However, when they went back in 2018, they were told an application had not been submitted and in each subsequent year in which they have tried to access the scheme, they have been told that they do not have an open application. This is a Bord Bia quality approved family farm that routinely carries out all the key measures in that scheme. It seems very unfair and unreasonable to exclude them from the sheep welfare scheme. As the Minister will appreciate, it has resulted in the loss of considerable income for them over the past four years. He will appreciate also that they operate on a very tight margin with minimal profit. I forwarded the details to him this morning and I hope he can take it up with the Department.

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