Dáil debates

Wednesday, 22 May 2013

2:50 pm

Photo of Joe McHughJoe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine whose presence is a sign of how proactive he is on this issue. I acknowledge his intervention with the subsidised transport scheme which has helped farmers in very difficult situations.

In the short time available I will set out the context for my county and the north-west region in general. Farmers have been working daily on this issue in the hope and expectation that the weather will improve. Last Saturday's rainfall, however, has effectively set farmers' plans back by approximately two weeks. Intertwined with this, the first cut of silage is behind by approximately one month, giving a figure of six weeks in total. This has put farmers in a very difficult position. There are farmers who, through their own resources, are getting meal, hay and silage from neighbouring farmers, but others are in a very difficult position. I have spoken to the Minister about farmers who have organised private transport to get fodder because the co-op does not have it. How can we help these farmers?

The stakeholders such as farmers' organisations and Teagasc need to draw up a plan for the next 12 months. I would include a more constructive engagement with our UK counterparts in that plan. With this in mind, I wrote formally this morning to the UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Mr. Owen Paterson, MP, to discuss how we could engage further with his Department and the devolved institutions in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the Crown dependencies to plan a strategy for the next 12 months. The problem does not apply simply to the here and now which is the difficulty for most farmers but will continue to the end of the year. With less silage being cut owing to the deplorable weather conditions, this difficulty will continue in the next nine to 12 months.

Photo of Martin FerrisMartin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister for coming into the House and acknowledge the efforts being made in the current crisis. The three Deputies who have raised the issue today come from west of the River Shannon. That indicates how bad things are.

I come from a farming background and have never seen such a drastic situation. When the weather broke last Tuesday and again at the weekend, it put things back significantly, with the effect that there is a shortage of fodder. I consider it to be a fodder famine. Dependence on hay from England and France has proved difficult. Having spoken to farming organisations, particularly in the marginal areas, I do not believe it will stop now. This will carry on over the winter and into next year; therefore, we need some contingency plans in place to deal with it. Will the Minister consider setting up a sub-group involving all of the interested groups in order that they can come up with strategies to prevent what we are going through?

Will the Minister consider opening up ports? In my county farmers are trying to bring in up to 5,000 bales of fodder by boat from France. If that was possible, it would alleviate the problem in the south-west corner temporarily. The Minister needs to remember that there is no cut of silage yet. The only silage cut down my way has been taken straight into the shed because farmers cannot put their cattle out and there is no possibility of proceeding with the main cut, which is the first one. People who used to make two and three cuts a year will be very lucky if they make two this year. On marginal land they will not get this. I would like the Minister to consider setting up a sub-group, as well as opening the ports for farm groups to bring in fodder.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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The farming community is going through a terrible time because of the fodder crisis, animal welfare issues and a cash flow crisis which is placing many farmers under serious mental health strain. The Minister must redouble efforts to bring urgently needed hay into the country, not only to deal with the immediate shortage but also to make provision for continuing poor weather over the summer. In my part of the country there are three to four farmers for every single bale that comes west of the Shannon. The Minister must immediately release an interim payment under the disadvantaged areas scheme to allow farmers to access money to purchase fertiliser and get it out on land as soon as possible. May and June are vital months for getting the volumes of grass required for winter forage.

Farmers have already spent their fertiliser money on buying additional fodder. Every possible effort must also be made to export store animals. Marts around the country cannot shift light store animals because farmers do not have the fodder to buy them and farmers selling stock do not have the fodder to keep them and bring them home. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Teagasc must undertake a full audit of stocking rates on farms and ensure assistance is provided directly for farmers who may not have adequate potential fodder supplies to maintain stocking rates in the long term. Additional support must be provided for farmers who have already availed of departmental support on animal welfare grounds. All farmers must complete a basic fodder management plan in conjunction with Teagasc to assess the requirements for and capacity to harvest forage for next winter. If these steps are not taken, we will face a further fodder crisis in the autumn which will require direct financial support, something which will have serious implications for the Exchequer.

Everyone within the agriculture sector must pull together to get through the current weather and fodder crisis and ensure all efforts are made to protect individual farmers in the coming months who may face additional challenges owing to the levels of stock on farms.

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputies for raising this issue. That they come from different parties and none reflects the fact that this problem has nothing to do with party politics. This is a genuine crisis that has hit many farms, depending on the part of the country affected, the soil depth and weather, particularly in the past two weeks. This is a problem that we need to solve collectively.

My Department is at the heart of that process, working with co-ops, Teagasc, private advisers, farm organisations and farmers. On 24 April we introduced a transport subsidy to try to encourage those who had the logistical know-how to bring in large volumes of hay from the United Kingdom and make it available to farmers at a normal price. We covered the cost of the transport. We have twice extended the deadline for the scheme and doubled the fund available. It may well be the case that we will have spent more than €2 million on the scheme by the time it is closed. So far, we have a total of 2,158 loads committed, 419 of which have yet to be delivered. That is over 40,000 tonnes of fodder, enough to feed approximately 5 million to 6 million animals.

What has happened in the past three to four weeks has been logistically an extraordinary effort to bring in very large volumes of feed from the United Kingdom and France and now the Netherlands. Deputy Denis Naughten has raised the issue of bringing in a ship. Dairygold is considering bringing in a ship from the Netherlands next week to bring in enough volume and then take it to whatever part of the country most needs it. This is not a matter of providing more for the south, the west or the midlands. We need to get it to whatever area needs it. Everybody needs to work together and is doing so to try to assist in that process with transport. The head of the Irish Road Haulage Association has been very helpful in co-ordinating the effort to bring in fleets of trucks with fodder.

It is extraordinary that Ireland is importing grass but that is the situation. We will continue to do that as long as is necessary. We are ending the fodder scheme officially this Friday but we are allowing until next Friday for importation. The reason I am doing this is that I do not want to keep extending the scheme through the summer, leading to a drip-feed of fodder week after week. I want to put the pressure and the onus on marts, co-ops and others importing hay, and other forms of fodder like maize, to bring in as much as they can over the next ten days to kill this issue once and for all. This will allow farmers get fodder into storage, as well as dealing with emergency access to fodder, so they can concentrate on grazing and managing silage cuts throughout the summer.

Certain wet parts of the country are four to six weeks behind in grass production. In other parts of the country, it is just two to three weeks. Much silage is being cut this week in some parts while none in others, as Deputy Martin Ferris pointed out.

There is no reason any animal in the country should starve. If a farmer is in the extreme situation where he cannot feed his animals for whatever reason, be it he cannot access or afford fodder, he should contact my Department and we will feed the animals. We have had over 800 calls in the past several weeks, of which 300 were significant welfare cases in which we intervened. So far, we have spent over €130,000 actually getting hay into farmyards to feed animals. We will continue to do that as is necessary and there is no ceiling to that fund as it is an animal welfare issue. We will work on a confidential basis with farmers to help them get over this period. This is not linked to inspections or enforcements. It is a purely animal welfare helpline.

This year we will have to extend the grazing and grass-growing season, if the weather allows. With this in mind, I, along with the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, earlier announced a temporary and targeted adjustment to two provisions of the nitrates regulations to support additional fodder production on farms in the coming months. Essentially, we will extend the period for the spreading of chemical fertilisers to the end of September rather than the middle of the month. It also deals with the phosphorous issue which is now a problem as many farmers have fed their animals with more concentrates than normally which has knock-on consequences for the nitrates directive and action plan. Teagasc is in overdrive to advise farmers and help them put new fodder management plans in place to which Deputy Naughten referred. This will continue throughout the summer.

We will also put in place a strategic advisory expert group which will remain in place right through next winter. It will be assessing the audits that we have to do on the availability of fodder and other strategic measures that need to be taken to ensure we can feed animals through next winter. There is much preparation under way for the medium to long-term problem with fodder supply. It is not all about the crisis, although ensuring all animals are fed is what is most important.

3:00 pm

Photo of Joe McHughJoe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I appreciate the Minister is on top of this issue. The message has to go out that there has to be a management plan over the next 12 months. While the narrative is often that farmers have it good with good prices for cattle and milk, the real story behind farming is that its costs have gone up in the past two years. Accordingly, we must consider the potential income for farmers over the next 12 to 18 months. Farmers, both small and large, have been hit badly.

The introduction of a means test for the farm assist scheme was a big blow to farmers. It is a dependency social payment and removing this means test should be considered in the next budget. Access to the payment would assist those farmers under severe financial constraints who had to spend more on fodder this year. The moneys they would get under the scheme will ultimately go back into the local economy.

Photo of Martin FerrisMartin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister claimed it is not possible to access the EU Solidarity Fund. Can he revisit that, as it is my understanding that the fund was previously used to assist Austrian farmers who faced a fodder crisis ten years ago?

The weather broke at the end of May last year and has not settled since. This is the problem farmers are facing. Unless they can get some sort of silage harvest this year, then there will be serious problems down the road. Every effort must be made to assist them. I welcome the Minister’s announcement he is extending the time for the spreading of fertiliser under the nitrates regulations. It will help in some way but provisions need to be put in place to ensure adequate fodder can be got in on the understanding that we are heading into a winter with little fodder saved this year with the same likelihood in early next year. I welcome the Minister putting in place a strategic management plan in this regard.

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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I must acknowledge that in fairness to the Minister he has taken on board every single suggestion put to him and implemented them as far as is possible.

Will the Minister examine the export of store animals out of the country? I understand there are licence applications for such exports before the Department. Will he ensure these are expedited and processed?

There is now a problem that agricultural merchants and many of the co-ops have extended credit to farmers to such an extent that they cannot extend it any further and remain viable. Will the Minister examine some mechanism to release part of the disadvantaged areas scheme payment, DAS? I know he cannot make the full payment until all inspections are completed. However, will he look at an interim payment that would allow farmers to purchase fertiliser? In my part of the country where the weather is improving, farmers do not have the money or the access to credit to buy fertiliser. Unless, fertiliser is spread over the next fortnight, we are looking at a very serious animal welfare issue and viability issues for the agricultural sector this autumn.

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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DAS is never paid before the end of September. There is a reason for that. Legally, one cannot make a payment until one can prove that a farmer qualifies for it. One of the qualification criteria is that the farmer has to have had his animals for seven months. We are not even seven months into the year. I am being asked to give out payments to farmers before they even qualify. If I did that, the Commission would introduce a disallowance meaning we will not get further payments later on in the year. DAS is a slightly different category to single farm payments because it is a matching fund, as half of it comes from the Exchequer. Naturally, one would assume we could pay that part of the DAS payment now and worry about the rest later. That is not how it works. There are strict rules under which one can make payments. In order to make a payment legally, one must ensure the farmer qualifies and make the necessary inspections to ensure he is compliant.

If I start making payments early without those checks in place, when the Commission audits us, it will point out that we made payments inappropriately and we will get disallowances. In the UK disallowances have been in the hundreds of millions of euro while Denmark’s disallowances came to €110 million. Last year, Ireland’s disallowances came to less than €2 million out of €1.2 billion in payments.

That is how compliant we are. Deputy Naughten is correct that if farmers are not spreading fertiliser because they cannot afford to buy it due to lack of credit, that is a mad situation and we need to address it through the banking system and the credit available from co-operatives and merchants. We need to find a way to do that but that is why we have a banking system. If farmers know they will receive a cheque containing a DAS payment at the end of September and a cheque in the middle of October under the single payment scheme, they should be able to use the banking system, which should give them competitive credit rates during that period. Banks have told me they are happy to make credit available to farmers with no repayments required until the scheme payments come through in the autumn. We should be able to put that facility in place. My Department is not a bank and we would get ourselves into difficulty if we tried to advance payments without putting the necessary structures in place.

I will put in writing the reason we cannot access the solidarity fund for Deputy Ferris. I have pushed hard on that issue to try to get something out of it and it just has not been possible.

I take the point made by Deputy McHugh. Management plans are needed at national level and at individual farm level to prepare for next winter and we have to put them in place over the summer.