Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The sheep sector in Mayo, no more than in my home county of Donegal, is an important part of the farming make-up. It has been under pressure in recent months, certainly for store finishers who had a challenging winter with prices down on previous years and increased costs.

With the new CAP this year, the schemes that are in place and the changes to the entitlement structure will benefit the sheep sector more than any other sector. Convergence will benefit the Deputy’s county, with the front-loading aspect for sheep farmers there. The most significant decision I made, knowing the challenging situation sheep farmers are having with their income, was to ensure that every sheep farmer applied for ACRES. If we had not been able to increase and provide the extra funding to ensure everyone could get in to the scheme, almost half of the farmers who applied in some counties would not have got into ACRES. That is a payment this year of potentially up to €7,000, with the average payment expected to be between €5,000 and €6,000. That decision was made specifically to ensure we were backing farmers in the environmental space. We are also very aware of current incomes.

The new sheep welfare scheme, the sheep improvement scheme, offers €12 per ewe. Over time, and looking from budget to budget, I will see if we can improve the payment but we have to work within the budgetary envelope we have. When we take the various schemes in place, the Government is strongly supporting the sheep sector. Most important, in recent weeks it has been most welcome to see the increased market returns, with prices breaking the €8 per kilogram for spring lamb and €7 per kilogram for hoggets. Of particular significance was the increase last week of up to 60 cent per kilogram. Hopefully that will continue over coming weeks.

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