Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senators for the tone of the discussion and their questions, which were constructive. I will try to answer some of the questions and clarify some of the points made.

On single farm payments, these are never paid in September. The single farm payment is not due until mid-December. Last year, and for three of the past five years, we have managed to get an advance on that in terms of getting half of the payment six weeks early, namely, mid-October. We will be applying for that again this year because of the cashflow issues on farms. It is not possible to get approval for payments earlier than that and we should not raise expectations in this regard. Even if we could, the Department would have to carry the cost in terms of financing payments because they do not become available until the end of the year. The Department already bridges the cost of the payments in mid-October. My Department is not a bank and cannot produce significant sums of money.

It has been suggested to me over recent weeks that every farmer would get an advance payment of €1,000. I would like to facilitate this but I do not think I can. There are 130,000 farmers in the country eligible for single farm payment. If Senators do the maths, they will see the amount we would have to seek from the Department of Public Expenditure of Reform because there is no money coming from Europe until the end of the year. The reason we have a banking system is to assist farmers get over that problem. I have had discussions with senior bank officials. The banks are willing to put in place short-term loans with low interest rates in respect of which there is no repayment requirement until single farm payments are received. The purpose of a banking system is to assist people through difficult periods in terms of credit availability, financing, bridging and so on. My Department cannot be expected to do that. Cashflow issues can be resolved by way of the credit facilities available in co-operatives and through banking facilities in place for farmers with the capacity to repay, which includes most of them.

It should not be forgotten that commodity prices this year are strong. Milk prices may reach an all-time high this year and beef prices are also strong and increasing. Store cattle are an issue currently because of the availability of grass, as indeed are store lambs. With some normalisation of weather patterns, that should resolve itself quickly. This has been a disastrous start to the year for farming, but it does not have to be a disastrous year in terms of returns because, in my view, the price of commodities will remain strong up to the end of the year. We need to plan, in the medium and long term, to manage how we get through what has been primarily a fodder crisis. I accept the point made that there are other issues linked to it. We are doing that. Just as there were officials in the Department working full-time on the horsemeat crisis, there are officials in the Department working full-time on this issue.

The idea of setting up more task forces or groups in some way misses the point, although I am not saying we should not have a group linked to the high implementation group of Food Harvest 2020. There many groups with such links. At the next high level implementation group we will have an environmental impact assessment of Food Harvest, including its effects on biodiversity, changing weather patterns, etc. A consultant has been working on that for the past six months and the report will come this month to the high level working group. The broader issues regarding the environment are being looked at in some detail, and we are required to do that with a plan of this scale.

There are issues regarding advance payments. We would normally make disadvantaged areas scheme, DAS, payments around the week of the ploughing match, which is towards the end of September. That is when we will pay them this year.