Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Right around the country. The issue that we are talking about today is, in a sense, how hard farmers have to work when they are dealing with areas of natural constraint. Looking at these payments, I suppose it is a bit like saying to a teacher who is working in a school that is run-down that he or she is not going to get quite as much even though that teacher does the same hours as somebody who is in a bigger or flashier school.

I thank the Minister for coming to the House to address this really important issue. He knows that Sinn Féin has had a motion on the Seanad Order Paper for some time now. That motion is very simple. It calls for the retention of mountain grazing as a separate category under the review of the areas of natural constraint scheme and for the payments going forward to properly reflect the multiple biophysical and specific constraints experienced by farmers who farm mountain-type land and for those payments to be at similar rates to the current offshore island rates. It also calls for the new map of ANC areas to be published in time for proper consultation before the draft is sent in to the EU. That was pretty simple for us. I cannot understand what was so offensive about that motion such that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have voted against it three times now. In fact, today they voted not to allow a motion after this debate on the very same motion. Where is the democracy in that? I welcome the opportunity here because it is a crucial issue to discuss. Even though it has been referred to by those on my left as "shenanigans", it has brought us here to debate this issue, and I do not think it would have been debated otherwise.

I welcome the review of this scheme. The Minister knows that the ANC scheme provides for a payment to farmers with land in constrained areas to compensate for all or part of the additional costs and the income forgone relating purely to the constraints for agricultural production. The review provides an opportunity to address the inequality that exists in farm incomes and that is the basic crux of the matter. This can be done by front-loading the payments on the first 20 ha to €250 and increasing the rate on the next 14 ha to €170 per hectare as well as allowing €70 for the remaining 6 ha, to a maximum of 40 ha.

The mountain-type category must be designated as an upland-specific category. Mountain grazing land must be recognised a specific constraint first, before any biophysical constraint is added. We do not think there is any technical or legal reason this cannot be done. If there is 10% of a specific constraint built into the review, then this must be on the mountain grazing category. Looking at the overall budget of the €195 million, and the additional €25 million committed by Government - which we in Sinn Féin welcome - we believe that it can be increased to €300 million by using the underspend from the national rural development programme, NRDP, budget. The Minister might ask where that is going to come from, but we have already identified underspends, and we know that GLAS is going to be underspent by between €60 million and €70 million.