Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail)

This matter relates to delayed payments to farmers at this time of year. This issue also arose in previous years. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has issued a charter and established a target of paying all farmers by late September of most years.

Farmers face a particular difficulty this year because of the increased cost of raw materials, such as fertiliser and feed. The cost of re-stocking has increased because cattle and sheep prices are high, land prices have risen and even the cost of removing dead animals has increased. These costs generally accumulate at the back end of the year in September, October and November.

Unfortunately, a large proportion of farmers did not receive their payments this year. The delays in paying the single farm payment and disadvantaged area payment relate to mapping irregularities within the Department, where maps provided by farmers did not correspond to the aerial photographs taken by the Department. The disadvantaged area payments were also delayed because of the issue of the stocking densities.

While I accept that cross-checks must be done and compliances met, I believe the system that was in place a number of years ago was fairer. At that time, the farmer was paid for the actual land within the compliance of the map and if, for example, 5% of the land was not in compliance that percentage of the payment was retained until the matter was resolved. Delaying a payment for a month or two puts a farmer under huge financial pressure.

A possible solution might be to pay farmers who have no compliance issue at the end of September and that all other farmers, even where there is a discrepancy in their maps or photographs, would receive at least 75% of the payment owed to them. This system should be adopted. I appreciate that the officials in the Minister of State's Department are under pressure, especially at the back-end time of year when payments are due. However, if that system were adopted it might ease some of the pressure on farmers who are struggling at this time of year. I understand many of the payments have issued since.

Let us consider the disadvantaged areas scheme. I understand more than 100,000 applications were made and, of these, approximately 78,000 were paid out by the middle of October, but some 23,000 were delayed and this has caused a financial burden on farmers. We are entering a time of year when farm organisations and farmers will be in talks with the Minister of State. They were at the Joint Committee on Communications, Natural Resources and Agriculture today to discuss several important schemes and to outline the importance of farming, the Department's objectives and the Government's objectives under the Food Harvest 2020 Milestones for Success report, as part of which we are trying to increase our exports of dairy and beef product by 42% by 2020 over and above the average from 2007 to 2009. We all support and fully subscribe to these objectives. However, these targets cannot be obtained if we do not support agriculture in the forthcoming budget.

There will be unilateral discussions between Departments at Cabinet level and at Minister of State level in terms of which schemes are retained and which are to be considered for reduction. However, if a stimulus is to be provided to the economy in any shape or form, it must be delivered through agriculture. Let us consider agriculture and the Irish food industry. They provide approximately 15% of the total employment in the State which amounts to almost 300,000 jobs. Irish farmers spend almost €8 billion per year on agriculture inputs and living expenses. The majority of this is expended locally. When a farmer gets a cheque in the post, he spends it on upgrading his yard or on new stock. He reinvests the money so that the money is being reinvested in the economy. Figures from a recent UCD report commissioned by the IFA show that every €100 of agricultural output creates and additional €73 for the economy. Effectively, every €100 spent creates €173 of expenditure in the local economy. This should be borne in mind although it was not outlined in my question, which was more to do with getting the payments issued. I hope the Minister of State will be able to outline the level of payments made, when farmers who have not yet received their payments can expect to get them and whether, in the case of farmers who may not have received their payments but who may have small discrepancies, at least some of the payments could be front-loaded.