Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The main provisions of this Bill relate to the creation of the agriculture appeals review panel, independent from the agriculture appeals office. That is to be welcomed. As the Minister stated, it is part of the programme for Government. It is envisaged that this office would be responsible for undertaking independent review of the decisions of officers of the agriculture appeals office. It also further seeks to facilitate decision reviews in an accessible manner, leaving the option open for High Court appeals and scheme decisions. I wonder whether the Minister knows how many farmers have undertaken High Court appeals on that basis. I would not have thought it was too many.

In this Bill, there are clarifications introduced around timeframes for seeking review on appeal decisions by the agriculture appeals office. It says that inspections for eligibility and cross-compliance are carried out by the lead Department and where an appellant, that being a person lodging an appeal, is dissatisfied with the Department's decision on a scheme application, the situation is to submit a appeal to the agriculture appeals office for a decision to be reviewed within three months of having notified the Department of the decision and having exhausted the internal Department review processes.

The legislation proposes to set up a new review panel of farmers who are dissatisfied with the decision of the agriculture appeals office. I welcome that, and I think most people do. I am glad to see that the Minister had wide engagement with farm bodies when the legislation was being drafted. The review panel will consist of five members, an independent chairperson, the director of the agriculture appeals office and three additional members with technical and practical expertise. That is probably the most important aspect of the panel the Minister is proposing. I am interested to know what the Department thinks technical and practical experience will be needed. The panel will need people who are involved in farming, people who come from different farming backgrounds and people who understand the importance of engaging with agricultural schemes and trying to draw down money as part of their income.

The other recommendation is the creation of a deputy director of the appeals office. This person will have a role to play in the area of quality assurance when it comes to appeals processes and the consistency of outcomes. That will involve qualitatively reviewing what the office is doing, which, I presume, is something the Department is trying to do already. Hopefully, the Department engaging with the office, mandating it and giving it teeth will improve the situation on the ground.

I am happy that the Bill underwent significant pre-legislative scrutiny, which has made it robust. The Bill will improve the environment relating to reviews of appeal decisions and will do so with the input of people who have relevant farming experience. Hopefully, this will ensure maximum engagement on the challenges that often arise in terms of scoring and compliance with all of the requirements of farm schemes.

As the Minister will be aware, one of the big issues that arises for farmers availing of farm schemes is in terms of their scoring and compliance and being able to be awarded the full output that the schemes provide.

I will digress slightly and go beyond the legislation for a minute. In 2022, Irish farmers received approximately €2.02 billion in direct farm payments. The largest payment was the basic farm payment, BPS, which accounted for approximately €810 million. The Minister will be aware that in the most recent census 61,473 people considered themselves to be farmers, yet last year there were 123,000 people registered for BPS payments. The Minister will be aware this issue has arisen a number of times. The Irish proportion of the CAP budget is diminishing and we need to modern the whole area of CAP. It needs to be thought about in terms of awarding productive farmers who are actually producing food in an ever-more tightly regulated business environment. We talk a lot about exports and productive farming but this is where we now have an issue in this country. We can see it. If one goes around the country and looks at what is happening in terms of productive farming, one will know, with the weather the way it has been, the grass growing and the nitrogen derogation, the reductions in yield that are occurring across the country, particularly in the dairy sector, will have a knock-on effect right across beef and stores. I assume something similar may be happening in the sheep sector as well. The increasing environmental pressures on food production are bringing significant change to our agrifood sector and the CAP moneys must be prioritised for those 61,473 active food producers in order to support them in meeting their ongoing challenges. Without significant revisiting of farm supports distribution, significant numbers of viable farms may no longer make productive sense into the future. That is stark. It is staring us in the face. I know of a number of farmers who are in that position.

I highlight to the Minister the ongoing challenges that reducing nitrogen levels is bringing. Farmers are as committed as anybody else to biodiversity. In my own area in the south east, we get singled out a lot for the high nitrogen levels in the three rivers we have down there and it is all attributed to farming. That is most unfair. We still have some dysfunctional water effluent and treatment systems down there. We still have some factories that are discharging effluent into the water courses. It is not all down to agriculture but agriculture gets the blame. As the Minister will be well aware, for this past year, particularly for farmers who are trying to put out fertiliser, the amount of phosphorous and potassium they can put out has now been significantly reduced and that is having a direct effect on the amount of grass they are growing, which affecting their yield. Farmers are now being told to either take on more land to try to keep their stocking rates, or to reduce their stocking, yet we are one of the most efficient grass and milk producing nations in the world. It does make sense. I know these are EU directives to which we have signed up, so there is not a lot we can do, but certainly we must have some latitude in the implementation of plans to understand the difficulties farmers are experiencing.

I know of a dairy farmer in the south east who had a farm inspection in January. Three agricultural inspectors came to his farm and spent three days looking at his infrastructure, taking soil samples and reviewing his paperwork. Lo and behold, in June another two arrived to do the same inspection, less than six months later, and review what the first people were doing. All of this takes up a person's productive time. More important, it is starting to make people feel that they are somehow villains in terms of the role they are playing. If we have inspections, surely they should be done adequately once a year or they should be done to take account of the significant seasonality that the schemes require. It does not make much sense to have five people traipsing around the south of Ireland for five days each. I am not quite sure what they were doing.

I refer to other payments that might be picked. Someone just said to me that the drive for improved biodiversity should be encouraged by a coupled payment that farmers could see as a valuable entity within itself. Many farmers have devoted their lives to being good land managers and producing milk, grain and meat of the best quality that the market demands. Having some kind of a biodiversity payment would encourage them further in that area.

I will share with the Minister a communication I have just received on agriculture and how farmers who are suffering TB testing at present can get in touch with the Department. The text message I received states:

The Department mostly do not answer their phones. If they do, they offer no help. They say they will get someone to phone you but if you are lucky, you will get a call back, usually within two weeks, or else usually an answering machine. Rarely do you get a call back.

People who are on short time, term leave, annual leave, parental leave or sick, and no one else seems to be avail to help or to take over the query that they were handling.

The person asks that a phone line dedicated to issues relating to TB testing be introduced for every county in the country in order that farmers can contact the Department to find out how things are working out at what is a distressing time for many farmers who get a positive test on their farm. Maybe the Minister will take that on board.

In the main, the Bill has undergone significant pre-legislative scrutiny and it is to be welcomed by the House. I certainly welcome it.

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