Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)

I wish to discuss the recent cuts in the sheep welfare and beef welfare farm payments which have happened recently. I am very disappointed about this. The farmers I am talking about are seriously disappointed about it. They had asked prior to the budget that the amounts they were to receive would be increased. On budget day we were assured that there would not be an increase but that last year's payment levels would be maintained. I went back with that story to the people who had asked me. I was very disappointed when I learned about a week ago that cuts had taken place and that we were not getting what we were promised or what we believed we were to get. There is a cut from €75 to €67 to the beef or calf welfare scheme and a cut from €13 to €11.50 for a ewe.

These are farmers who are producing lambs and calves and they have to be seen after. When we talk about sheep farmers, I think of many fellas and the type of hills they have to travel to collect their sheep to see after them. I think of John Egan, who is now in his mid-70s, and his son Glyn. They fertilised their land with a bucket. They cannot travel it with any kind of mechanical vehicle. They manure the land and they do 600 or 700 acres manually. I think of things like that and the kind of work they go through to keep the lambs alive and to keep their calves alive. It is a really hard job. We are talking about generational renewal and young fellas carrying on where farmers left off. I mentioned work-life balance here today to Deputy Calleary. We must remunerate and reward these farmers because if we do not, there will be a serious decline. Our hills and valleys will not be grazed and they will go wild and we will have more trouble with fires and all that. These people have been doing a great job over the years. The amount of money per individual calf or ewe is small, but we are talking about a loss of €2.2 million to the sheep farmers and a loss of €3.7 million or so to the calf welfare scheme. That is a loss of almost €6 million in rural communities. That is a lot of money to lose divided among all the farmers. Then it is communities, shopkeepers, hardware suppliers, beef meal suppliers and so on. They are all going to take a hit with this.

I am wondering where the hell the money has gone. I got a land the other night in the agriculture committee when two people from the Department came in. The discussion was about anaerobic digesters. These are commercial things that are placed in towns. It came out of one of the witnesses that there would be grants of up to €5 million for an individual person who would build one of these anaerobic digesters. This is about satisfying the 2030 Paris Agreement targets, whereby Ireland would be supplying its own natural gas. This is part of this. Think of that - the whole country loses €5 million to just one person. Is it somewhere like that the money has gone all of a sudden?

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