Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the crew from Mountbellew and Gerry Connellan from Elphin. We have discussed this Bill at committee and had the different farming organisations in. The Minister is aware of the different views in the line of fertiliser. Last year many people could not afford to spread fertiliser but I hope some of the monopolies in the context of inflated prices might be sorted out in the second quarter. That is my understanding. No more than plastic or any other thing, I cannot fathom how the Department will control or look after the stuff that comes from across the Border under this Bill. Until there is an Assembly in Northern Ireland and one is working in conjunction with the other, it is hard to see how it will work.

There is a register. That is fine and I accept that part, but there is an issue. The Minister knows it, being from Donegal. I come from a village in the parish of Glinsk. There is one shop and one pub. Fair play to them, they are giving a service where one can buy meal or fertiliser, but it is in a small context. I brought this up before at committee. We need to make it workable. They will not be able to afford big whizz-kid computers or IT systems. We wish to make sure that we facilitate those people, as best as possible and we are not making it cumbersome. I am not saying it is happening in agriculture, but in many other areas, such as quarrying, we are driving it to the big guys and forgetting about the small person. The same goes for building, where the person who built four or five houses cannot tender for the big job, or Irish Water, where one has to have €1 million or €2 million of a turnover, before one can tender.

I know one does not have to tender for this, but the Minister understands better than anyone, given where he is from, that if one makes it cumbersome for a person to sell - fertiliser is one of the tightest games for the person in the shop - he or she will not stay doing that for the amount of money involved. Will the Minister and his officials, who are with him today, look at that to make it a workable solution for those people?

I do not know what part the farmer has to play in registering. I presume wherever the farmer buys from will be registering, but a farmer may have to do something or fill something in. With the fodder scheme if a farmer presses the submit button and has filled in something wrong, they are penalised and, unfortunately, they do not get the money they were to get. There needs to be a phased-in period of working with the farmers to make sure that they understand it. Not everyone has the facility of being IT literate and being able to use computers. We need to make sure that we do this and it is not going to be a cost on the farmer or those small merchants. I am not worried about big co-ops that are selling thousands of tonnes. I am looking at the small person selling, where the farmer can go off on his Massey Ferguson 35X, pick up a tonne from that person and bring it home. I ask that the Minister look at that part.

I have made my views clear about distribution and the vet getting too much control. While I have the height of respect for vets - one can get a vet quicker than a doctor in many parts of the country - there should have been a better allowance made for the responsible person. I ask the Minister and his officials to look at that to see how we can work around it. In fairness to the Minister, he has shown a bit of flexibility. I grant him that. However, we made a considerable mistake with the British, who are gone out of it. My understanding is that in 2014, they wanted Ireland with them in respect of the responsible person.

The other thing is about medicines. I am not talking about something for a calf with scour or an injection that is not generally used on the farm. I will be very blunt about what I am afraid of; it is that we are giving vets an open hand at, basically, screwing a farmer. That should not be allowed to happen. We need to make sure we have a simplified system for dosing for fluke and worms. I understand fully about sheep, cattle and so on and where cattle are not reacting to some of the drenches or it is not stopping the problem. I understand all of that. The Minister pointed to the responsible person. In many of these cases, the vets or some others were putting it out. That is the bottom line.

No more than for fertiliser, I worry about how it will operate and about a fool proof system either side of the Border to make sure people are adhering to this or that this does not cause a market to move away.

I look at the likes of Roscommon, where you can go into Colm Tully and get your stuff. It is a great service. It is beside a mart. You can shoot in, as it were, and get your stuff, and farmers who are at the mart can get it on the way out, go home and do their dosing. I understand there are problems with mastitis and all that in the dairy sector, but this is about working with farmers and not putting extra costs in front of them. That is the only part I worry about. I am not against making sure resistance in dosing is tackled. I am not against that whatsoever. I agree with that because otherwise we would end up with problems in every part of the country.

Another thing is that some of what we would call the good doses have been taken off the market lately. Some of the doses were great down through the years but you do not see as much of them now. I do not know what is going on or how the pharmaceutical operators are working. I am not going to talk all evening on this because we have gone through it at committee time and again. The one part of this Bill relating to dosing gear and medicines needs something, be it at a herd test or whatever, where the vet would do the plan for the year on it for what is needed, and that it is put in. I know there was to be an allowance and perhaps the Minister will confirm whether a group of co-operatives could have a vet and could work that way. I do not know whether that can be worked. The Minister might confirm that to me.

That is my main concern. As we discussed at committee, farmers are taking €22 or €23 less for a lamb and the cost of meal has gone up. I hope the Minister will address that very shortly because there are many of those farmers. I am concerned we will make things dearer for them. We are all trying to keep rural areas as affluent as possible and doing as well as possible. However, with the way stuff has gone up in price, including fertiliser and everything else farmers are buying, we do not want, as elected representatives, to be putting more bureaucratic paperwork in their way and, on top of that, more costs on top of them.

I would ask the Minister and his officials to consider the following. I met the Chief Veterinary Officer one day and showed him a system. The Minister's own adviser also saw it. I do not know what the Minister's thoughts on it are but it might make it easier for this whole system to work. I know the Minister will say that the responsible person can still put it out, and they can, but there has to be that bit of paper. All I am afraid of is the bit of paper farmers will need will cost them money. I have a fear about that.

There is one thing I would ask the Minister to do if he is going ahead with this, because it has to be done. I understand there are certain rules in Europe that we have to adhere to but I would ask the Minister to leave room for himself to review all of this within six months to a year so that if it is being abused, he can come back and basically crack the whip at where it has gone wrong. That is one thing that should definitely be done. It is about farmers. We have more farmers in the country than we have vets and they are more important to me, to be quite frank about it. I have no disrespect for vets. They are great people but the farmers are the people producing the food, who are up at night lambing the ewes and keeping the whole system going. I would ask the Minister to look at that and try to put that into it.

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