Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish you, a Cheann Comhairle, the staff here in the Dáil, including the gardaí, and all here in the Dáil a very happy Christmas.

Is the Tánaiste aware of the many crises hitting farmers recently? I will start this week with knackeries, where a strike is ongoing, leaving dead animals on the grounds of farms for days, open to dogs and vermin attack. There is also the mental health stress of farmers and their families having to endure the smell and sight for days. The renderers have had massive increases charged on them and no longer find it viable to collect fallen animals. The Minister, Deputy McConalogue, has stated that acquiring a burial licence for dead animals comes with strict environmental conditions. Where are the environmental concerns about having dead animals in farmers' yards for days on end? It is shocking, but everyone seems to be standing back rather than creating a solution.

I move on to the ICBF, which, at the stroke of a pen, overnight, wiped out farmers' incomes by up to 44%, costing these mainly suckler farmers tens of thousands of euro by undervaluing their bulls. Farmers who were doing everything by the ICBF book for ten years were met with an overnight change that destroyed their farm practices and their income.

Also in the past two weeks, many farmers have been told that their farm payments under ACRES will not be paid to them, as promised in November and December. This means that 27,000 farmers, 60%, will not get their payments now but may in February or later. This is a payment out time for farmers, who have promised co-ops, contractors and others that they would have the money to pay the bills and now they cannot. It is not they will not; they simply cannot.

Look at the nitrates crisis into which farmers have been plunged. Thousands of farmers will have to cull cattle in the new year to comply with these extreme guidelines. I have spoken to these farmers, who are pleading for some short-term movement with the Department. They were misled, they feel, by the senior politicians visiting parts of west Cork giving hope of some movement that never materialised. If this movement is not forthcoming, why not a compensation package for the losses incurred by these farmers early next year?

If that is not enough of a hammer blow by this Government on agriculture, the sneaky new VAT reclaim changes will put any future or existing farm building project in doubt. This inability of unregistered farmers to draw back VAT on certain farm equipment, which they could do until recently, is the difference between many farm projects going ahead and not going ahead. This is nothing but a direct attack on future investment in farms. In my constituency clinic in Clonakilty last Saturday, a young farmer had his full plans to build a new round milking parlour, feed bins, bulk tanks plus further works. It was going to cost him €360,000, with €82,800 of that in VAT, which he was able to reclaim before this change but now cannot reclaim. That has left the whole of that farm investment project paused.

What would the Tánaiste say to that young farmer? Does the Tánaiste accept this is an effort by the Government to shut down good farm practices? If I am wrong, how does he see a solution to these five issues?

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