Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and the Chair. Today I raise the matter of having the Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme, known as TAMS II, include the generation capacity that is required for farmyards. As the Minister of State is aware, TAMS II has been a very successful scheme. It provided important funding for farm equipment in order to ensure expansion. Under the dairy equipment scheme, TAMS II has funded milking parlours, milk cooling equipment, water heating, and also in-parlour feeding systems. The anomaly in the system, unfortunately, is generation capacity, which is required when or if there is an outage of power.

In the middle of October this year, we had a weather event which was amazing in so many ways. The south west of Ireland was greatly affected. At one stage, 385,000 were without power. This included farms, businesses and the wider members of the public. The knock-on effect that had on the agricultural community was immense. There has been a large expansion in agriculture, particularly in the dairy herd. Over the last four years the number of dairy cows has increased by 300,000 to 1.4 million. With such a large expansion, there has been a major increase in plant size and capacity. Milking parlours and bulk tanks have all been expanded. At the back of that, the one thing that has not increased is the generating capacity. The hardship that farmers and animals went through during this unfortunate weather event was immense. It took ten days for some of these areas to have power again.

In many ways, for those of us that were affected, it is very hard to describe. There were situations where generators were being moved continuously in order that cows could be milked at least once a day. There was an article in the Southern Stara few weeks ago describing how one man milked 1,200 cows, moving a generator seven times in a 24-hour period. That was the level of work required to ensure that his cows, or the cows in his community were milked. People worked together.

What I am seeking here today is that TAMS II should be amended to include generators. Generators are a huge part of the industry. We have seen a deficit in generating capacity. TAMS II allows for so many things to help the agriculture industry to expand. I have mentioned milking parlours, cooling systems, store equipment, water heating and in-parlour feeding systems. It is certain that the anomaly is the lack of generation. We need to include that as an important part, so that the industry that is worth billions to us and to this economy can develop. It is, in many ways, the last piece of the jigsaw. I hope today that we can put on the agenda that the Minister of State can review TAMS II, to ensure the anomaly can be addressed, and that the generating capacity shortfall in the dairy industry, that unfortunately we have all seen, can be addressed as well. I thank the Minister of State.