Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

The sections are a reflection of the existing legislation, which is the Bovine Diseases (Levies) Act 1979. It gives the Minister or any future Minister the power to introduce a new levy should he or she deem it appropriate in new areas in animal health and disease control. It also puts in place a number of requirements to be met by the Minister before he or she can do so. Where a Minister proposes to make regulations under this section a draft of the regulations should be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas and the regulations shall not be made until the resolution approving the draft has been passed by each House. It is also clear that any Minister who wants to introduce a new regulation to introduce a new levy will have to do so with the industry as otherwise a series of non-compliance issues will arise.

Consider the process with regard to introducing a financing mechanism for the new dairy quality assurance scheme we intend to introduce over the next 12 to 18 months. A huge amount of consultation has taken place with all of the stakeholders, including processors, the Irish Dairy Board, the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society and farming organisations. There is no question of this legislation when it is enacted resulting in increased costs for farmers. It will give a Minister power at a future point in time to introduce a new levy under certain conditions and he or she will have to go through the necessary consultation to do so, certainly from a political point of view.

Section 26 is about the levy itself and section 28, which Senator O'Domhnaill also proposes to delete, is about the mechanism for payment and its implementation. Quite frankly I think we would be mad not to give a Minister the power to introduce new levies if it was deemed appropriate to do so at some stage in the future. To give an example, at present I am being asked to introduce a pig levy to fund research into pig breeding and efficiency in pig farming by Teagasc. The industry is asking me to do this. We must have the power to be able to introduce a statutory levy and a legal mechanism to do so. This does not mean I will try to ask farmers to pay a lot more. However, the mechanism must be there legally to allow me do so if it makes sense. Sometimes the industry will not be overly happy about it but it may be necessary. In other instances the industry may ask for it because it wants to see money being collected to be spent on developing new markets, quality control, disease control or research. There must be some law and structure on the introduction of a statutory levy, and this is updated in the Bill given everything else that we are doing. Politically if one wants to be unhelpful one can paint this as the Minister threatening to introduce a set of levies but most of us know it would be political suicide to do so without a consultation process. It is not how the industry works in Ireland. It is in other countries but not here. We are putting in place a legal framework for future decisions that would be justified and laid before the Houses for comment and approval before they are introduced.