Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There have been intensive engagements between my team and contractors on the issues facing the latter. I will meet them shortly to discuss the challenges further. Due to the fact that excise duty on green diesel is much lower than on auto diesel, the capacity to make changes in that excise duty is limited. We applied significant cuts to standard diesel and standard petrol in response to the fuel challenges, but we also reduced the excise rate on agricultural diesel by 5 cent - 2 cent initially and a further 3 cent subsequently. While this reduction was small in terms of its impact on farmers and contractors, it represents the removal of the majority of the excise.

A large contracting expense on farms is silage. Importantly for the year ahead, I have introduced a €1,000 support for farmers to help cover the increased cost of contracting prices.

That is a significant measure which I hope will help in this regard.

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