Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputies should have no doubt that we recognise the importance of the sheep sector. We want a vibrant one in the future and understand the challenges it has faced.

A specific question was on the Brexit adjustment reserve. In this regard, it is right that we sweat every opportunity and analyse every avenue where there might be funding we can secure. Making the specific case has not proved possible to date. We still want to examine every opportunity to offer support, as requested by Deputy Durkan. That is why many sheep farmers have applied under ACRES and why, even though we had space for only 30,000 farmers, we pushed ourselves to the limit to ensure we could take in the 46,000. We made interventions because high input costs are contributing to the considerable pressure on sheep-farmer margins here. Prices for produce comprise one matter but we know livestock farmers have suffered greatly across the board owing to high input costs. That is why we had the interventions last year, including the €56 million fodder incentive scheme. The €8 million national liming programme is to be introduced this year. This support will be of assistance to farmers in that there is €2.5 million for multi-species swards. We are considering a range of supports for farmers in these challenging times.

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