Dan Boyle (Green Party)

The Government has entered into commitments it is allowed to and has tried to restrict what had been, up to now, discretionary payments. The main cut this year is the ending of the farm waste management scheme, although there was a hope to extend it. In the past year alone €195 million was spent on that scheme and in the past three years €615 million was spent on it. One cannot say there has not been a commitment on the part of the Government to tackle — with some success — through farm organisations and individual farmers, farm waste and pollution. That is a huge sum from public expenditure. However, that commitment is coming to an end, and it was known it would come to an end. In the context of low and diminishing public finances, those are the type of decisions we have to make. If one takes out the farm waste management scheme, one is talking about a cut in current expenditure in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of 1%. Most of the cuts are in capital expenditure. On that basis the remaining finances are there to be targeted to ensure we have a viable and sustainable system of agriculture in the future, especially to face the upturn, as and when it comes, but it can only come when public finances are available to be invested across the board in a way that all of us in society can endure.

While the motion reflects a concern among rural communities and the farming industry, it lacks a reference to what agriculture can contribute to the national recovery in times of economic stress. The lack of ideas from the Opposition parties makes me question whether they have the interests of agriculture and rural communities truly at heart. What they are engaging in with motions of this type is nothing other than points scoring. The motion does not represent a vision of agriculture as it is or what it could be and what it is likely to become. I hear nothing but an empty silence from the Opposition parties in those areas.