Results 3,321-3,340 of 34,618 for speaker:Seán Fleming

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: Is that out of the €13.7 billion?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: I will ask Mr. Gleeson to say that again on the public record because that figure needs to be out there. That is quite a high proportion. It is certainly the majority. One must also consider transport, processing and the profit margin on sales.

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: The farmers are going to put it this way: the value of their output was approximately €8.2 billion and the profit made after the goods left the farm was €5.5 billion.

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: Mr. Gleeson said that the value-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: We are not talking about the costs but the value added. The price achieved for the €8.2 billion worth of farm output-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: The price achieved on the export market for that was €5.5 billion. There is more to that because we did not export-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: How much of that was exported?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: Out of that €8 billion or so, let us say €7 billion was exported. By the time it left the country, that €7 billion generated an extra €6 billion for somebody. Does Mr. Gleeson see where I am going?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: It is probably not fair-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: I am not getting into that debate. I am saying that these are macro or national figures based on the sectors in the industry, as summarised in the Department's annual report. I am just asking Mr. Gleeson to break down-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: Out of the €8.2 billion in output, approximately €7 billion worth was exported, which yielded-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: There was almost 100% of an increase after the farmer was paid. That is interesting. That is all I will say. I am making this calculation on the basis of the figures supplied by the Department.

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: The Department probably has some breakdown based on the sector as well. I do not know.

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: I ask Mr. Gleeson to come back to us with what he has.

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: The more information the public has, the better its understanding of the industry. That is all I would say. I also suspect that in the context of the €9.7 billion that comes into Ireland in foodstuffs, the primary producers in some of the exporting countries got very little of final price that we paid for their produce. It cuts both ways but this committee has to look out for Irish...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: No, these are payments. There is a note on the next page about commitments but these are payments, I presume. Apologies, they are commitments.

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: Right. Has the funding that the Department is actually providing to the sector increased or decreased?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: He can send the information on to us. I do not need it now. I am not here just to extract figures on the hoof, if Mr. Gleeson will pardon the agricultural expression. He can send that on to us. I wish to go back to forestry now. I ask Mr. Gleeson to give a breakdown, in whatever range he can, for forestry. He referred to approximately 50:50, public to private. Obviously we know that...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: I ask the Department to provide a breakdown of the forestry grants paid to each of the public bodies involved and a breakdown of the payments to the other landholders who have forestry, by range, in terms of under €5,000, between €5,000 and €10,000 and so on. That is the type of information people seek by way of parliamentary questions and-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants (24 Oct 2019)

Seán Fleming: We also want to know what were the largest payments. We are interested in what would be some of the highest payments, typically, in forestry. Is there a cap on the number of hectares that can be afforested in the private sector?