Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. This issue was brought to my attention some months ago by a young farmer who had recently inherited his father's farm. We are all asked by Government and farming associations to encourage people to transfer family farms to young people who, perhaps, would be more efficient in terms of how they do their business and who are committed to farming and to improving farming practices.

Much has happened in recent budgets to facilitate the transition, and inheritance, from fathers to sons or daughters.

This situation that I bring to the attention of the Minister this morning relates to bovine viral diarrhoea, BVD, testing. For a myriad of reasons, it is important that BVD testing is done. For any particular herd, there is two-year compulsory BVD testing and then there is optional yearly testing. In this case, the father did the BVD testing on the herd in 2012 and 2013, and his son, who inherited the same cows in 2014, was required to repeat the process and do another two years of BVD testing. I know this family well. They are based in a part of County Clare that has extremely good-quality farming practices. It is a bureaucratic nuisance and an unnecessary financial burden to require a son to do testing, at some expense, on a closed herd that has already been tested by his father.

These are the types of bureaucratic problem that we need to deal with. There is no need for it. The herd had complied with the BVD testing requirements at a cost to the young man's father, yet when this young man, who has gone through third-level farming colleges and has his certificates - he is a good farmer - inherits the farm he must repeat the process simply because his father decided to sign over the farm to him. It seems grossly unfair and unnecessary because it involves the same cattle. Traceability has resulted in this country having an extremely impressive reputation abroad. Why are we requiring a son to turn around and repeat the process that has been done in a closed herd, that has been fully traced and is fully accounted for? It seems ridiculous. At this late stage, in this particular case, the details of which I will give the Minister of State afterwards, is there some way of giving a rebate or even a partial rebate to a farming family who are just starting out with good intentions and are doing their business correctly? They inherited a herd for which the business was done right. Surely a common-sense approach must be adopted here. More fundamentally, because there is money involved, the policy needs to changed. It needs to be rectified and it needs to be streamlined.