Results 21-40 of 5,219 for speaker:Martin Heydon

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: There have not been.

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: They are going up 44%. I can come back. A charge is being made now. When I negotiate a budget, I negotiate a whole headline figure, which is what I did for next year. In terms of the allocation for last year, the total amount of money granted to my Department from the Department of public expenditure for livestock schemes was €113 million. For 2025, it is €131 million....

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: The amount of people applying for the schemes has gone up.

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: Obviously, I will not go over the history of the challenges we had in the past but I thank the Deputy for his comments on that. As of today, 99.6% of farmers from 2023 have been resolved. The remainder is only 0.4%. We still have a couple of farmers outstanding from the green low-carbon, agri-environment scheme, GLAS. It is the nature of schemes. Individual things can happen on...

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: Exactly.

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: Last week, we paid 34,000 farmers for tranche 1 of ACRES. This week, we are making an additional 8,000 payments. We are now in a rolling system of payments and we will have more payments in the coming weeks.

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: We have commitments under the farmers' charter of hitting 90% of the payments in those regards. It is about the flow of money. Obviously, having this additional money is a critical part of that but in certain instances, we need farmers to come back with information that they have on their side and that is outstanding. If we have a query with a farmer around a partnership or some question...

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: I thank Deputy Cooney for raising that point. From attending the public meeting the Deputy held with farmers in Clare, I know that bovine TB is a big scourge and concern for beef farmers in the county, as it is in so many parts of the country. The reason we are here tonight is to try to fill the gap caused by the expenditure pressures I have for the remainder of this year. One area in...

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: It is a huge amount. I am looking for additional funding to cover total expenditure on a bovine TB eradication programme for 2025 of €136 million. The budget negotiations I have just come out of got an additional €85 million of new money into my budget for 2026 and that will have a total cost of €157 million for next year.

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: No, I did not say it was for that.

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: No, and not to contradict the Deputy, as of now, we have 99.6% of 2023-----

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: It incorporates payments in 2023 and 2024, but the additional €35 million I need to bring the figure up to €295 million for this year is to continue making the advance payments I started last week. There were 34,000 farmers who got advance-----

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: It is all this year's budget. As I fix those problems, those-----

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: Absolutely, but it is all out of the one pot. There was €260 million allocated in last year's budget for ACRES. I need €295 million, so that is what the other €35 million is for.

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: As we are under the new EU budget year, which begins on 16 October, under the rules, we can pay from 16 October onwards advance payments for 2025. They start being issued at this time of the year and then, depending on the farmers who need to get back to us for one reason or another, those payments continue to be rolled. The balancing payment is paid in March and April of every year. The...

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: Yes, it is. I will come back to the Deputy's earlier questions and make that point also. I have that here too. First, the Deputy asked a question about the carbon tax. That allocation is €143 million, the vast majority of which is going towards ACRES payments.

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: It is €143 million for us this year anyway. I am not sure of the total figure. The Deputy might have to check that with the Department of Finance. In terms of the Deputy's point around bovine TB and compensation costs, this is a dynamic disease. We have our best modelling and our best guesstimates for how we think that disease will operate and where it will spike. We try to roll...

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: I will. As part of the overall approach to bovine TB we are looking, root and branch, at every element of it, including the role of the factories as well. On the second point of ACRES, I made the point about April for the balance of payments. On the long established young farmers' scheme, or forgotten farmer scheme as it is known, a maximum of €5 million was allocated in last...

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: We do-----

Select Committee on Agriculture and Food: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Supplementary) (19 Nov 2025)

Martin Heydon: We are still going through the applications now but we anticipate that the number of farmers that qualify for this-----