Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to respond to the budget and the efforts that have been made with regard to agriculture. The broader point is that the Government had huge financial resources to bring to the table for this budget. Many people out there, particularly those in rural areas and across the western seaboard, recognise that it is a part of the world that has had the least investment in the past and, therefore, has the most potential if it gets the correct investment and the chance to try to move forward.

Some of that has happened in this budget but not enough. That is where we stand on it. We recognise where there has been progress made. That progress needs to be acknowledged, but there is so much more to do and so much more distance to be travelled. The Minister mentioned how many people, when he speaks to farmers, are talking about certainty for the future and they ask how are they going to have a future where they can see that their children or their children's children will still be on the land, farming and having a prosperous future. Many of them do not see that because there are other options there which pay much better and which do not have the same volatility and sense of uncertainty around it. We need to bring that certainty to agriculture and that sense that there is a future there for people to go back on to the family farm. Some of the measures that are talked of here will do something about that but will certainly not go far enough.

I was amused to see the issue about putting additional money into ACRES. I am getting calls every day from farmers complaining that ACRES is simply not working for them, that they cannot get their payments, do not know what their scores are, do not know what is happening and the Department tells them that its IT system is not working. It is just a mess. There needs to be recognition that a complete hames has been made of ACRES up to now. To put more money into it at a time when the Department does not have it straightened out raises the point that the Department had better get it right for farmers who want to play the game, get into that sector, enhance and maintain the biodiversity they have on their farm, do things properly, and get paid properly for the public good they provide for that.

On the forgotten farmers, who were mentioned, the Minister put some money into that. I do not believe he put enough. I believe more could be done for them in that respect because they are a sector who have been left behind for far too long. We need to catch up in that respect.

On the residential zoned land tax, the Minister has recognises there needs to be, and will be, some movement made in respect of farmers who are actively farming. We need the detail on that. Farmers have been promised before that they can be zoned out of it. I spoke to the Minister for housing two years ago about this and he told me there was no problem, to just get the land rezoned and that there was no issue. There is an issue and we are now being told it is going to be done. We need the detail as to how that is going to happen because we simply have not had that in the past.

The reality for the majority of people on small holdings who are trying to manage and who want to see a future for their children to farm the piece of land they have is that they do not know what the certainty is. The schemes are too short. They are for a year or two, then they are gone, and people do not know where the next scheme is going to come from or what is going to happen. That is the stuff the Government controls. The other side of that, which the Minister mentioned, is income volatility which is a huge problem. No sector knows where it will be or what income it will have for the produce brought to the mart, sent to the factory or wherever. The processors still have the ball at their toe and still control that sector. The Minister mentioned the organic sector. It is the very same people who control how that is processed and where they will get the money from that. Farmers are very uncertain because they see the big players dominating all the time and there needs to be a firm hand of Government to ensure there will be fair play, that the people who take all of the risks and put in all of the work get a fair return for that work. That is the issue farmers have and that is why more young people are choosing not to go in to farming.

I mention the general things in the budget that have been really let down. In a time when we have massive resources, the issues of investment and infrastructural investment in particular are a real problem. This is the case with the western seaboard and the roads in the west. The N17 is a road we have been crying out for years for something to be done with it. There have been a huge number of accidents and problems on it and there is no money for the like of that. We have no money for the western rail corridor and so many other big projects that could make a big difference in the country.

I recognise that some work has been done but it does not go nearly far enough for the kind of ambition we need to have to get balanced development throughout the country. We have to relieve Dublin and revive the rest and that means we have to invest in the rest. We have to ensure we can create opportunity and that opportunity will create more activity, which will create more opportunity. That is how we can get the economies in places like where I come from in the west, like Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo or Galway, where we have opportunity, to come back up again. There will only come up if we invest in them and that is where I think this Government has fallen down.

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