Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber this morning and thank him for agreeing to take this Commencement matter. It is important to point out that, in last week's budget, the Department of agriculture - the Minister of State's Department - received a 9% increase in its overall budget. Aside from the Department of Defence, which was obviously going to get a massive increase, it is the highest increase of any Department. I acknowledge the obvious good work the Minister of State and his colleagues put into working with the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Chambers, in increasing the funding. It will have a massive impact on rural Ireland. The Minister of State knows from Galway, as I do in Tipperary, that the money feeds back into the local community.

There was major funding for TB and an investment of €50 million in tillage. As the Minister of State knows, tillage has had a very difficult couple of years. It is a sector that needs some support. I welcome the announcement last week by the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Heydon, in terms of supporting the tillage sector and recognising that it does not need a one-year investment, but a base level that can be used going forward.

Tillage farmers across the country want to know what they are getting per hectare, but they do not yet know that. There is a good reason they do not know that. I welcome that the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Heydon, want to sit down with farmer organisations and thrash out how we get the scheme right so that farmers who really need money can get it. I ask for that to happen as soon as possible.

Obviously, farmers work in the expectation of an income that is coming through and need those decisions as much as possible. Whether it is €100, €120 or €125 per hectare, if farmers know that as soon as possible, they can budget after Christmas and into the setting season. In fairness, funding last year was provided around February or March. If that could be done again, it would be very welcome.

Last year, the money was given to everyone with no conditions in place because it was the first year of the scheme and, therefore, things could be done quickly. We have an opportunity to set a base for how we support the tillage sector and people who are really struggling. It has been an incredibly tough number of years. As the Minister of State knows, the price for barley this year is €190 but was €320 in 2022. The price for wheat last week was €200 but was €340 in 2022. There has been a decrease of over 40% in the price for farmers. No other business could manage that. This comes on top of a price increase in fertiliser from €300 to €400, or 33%. Rental costs for land over the past number of years have increased from €200 to €250 per acre to €350 to €400 per acre. All of these are added costs. Machinery costs have increased by about 20% or 25% in the past number of years.

Farmers have had a reduction in prices combined with a massive increase in costs, which means an Armageddon of challenges for many farmers. They understand that the Government recognises that and that is why the permit scheme is being put in place. I call on the Minister of State to talk to farming organisations and outline as quickly as possible the payments they will receive for the first year.

Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent)
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I thank Senator Ahearn for raising this important issue and I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the challenges currently being experienced by tillage farmers throughout the country and to outline the Government’s response.

I acknowledge the pressures facing the tillage sector. Coming on the back of two horrendously difficult years weather-wise, conditions for harvest 2025 were, thankfully, much more favourable. That has allowed fieldwork to be undertaken and completed in a timely fashion with generally good yields. However, the sector has encountered additional pressures this year due to challenging market conditions and downward pressure on prices, as the Senator stated. This, combined with continued high input costs, has had a significant negative impact on crop margins.

The Government recognises the importance of the tillage sector. It is an integral part of Irish farming and produces high-quality animal feed and bedding for the livestock sector and ingredients for the food and drink industry. The sector makes a significant contribution to the Irish economy, estimated at €1.9 billion per annum over the 2018-22 period. It is also important in terms of employment and is estimated to support over 11,000 full-time equivalent jobs.

My ministerial colleagues and I regularly engage with farmer representative bodies on tillage matters. The Minister, Deputy Heydon, has met them on several occasions since his appointment, including through pre-budget engagements and, most recently, at the tillage crisis meeting held on 12 September in Naas. I fully understand their concerns and their ambition to support, grow and develop the sector. The Government shares that ambition and is committed to growing the sector in line with targets set out in the climate action plan. My Department has provided substantial supports to tillage farmers in recent years. Schemes specific to the tillage sector, including the straw incorporation measure, the tillage incentive scheme, the protein aid scheme and the tillage capital investment scheme, have proved popular among tillage growers and it is widely acknowledged that these schemes made a significant contribution to the tillage sector in recent years as well as contributing to meeting Ireland’s environmental objectives.

In 2026, my Department will support the tillage sector with funding of €50 million through the protein aid scheme, the straw incorporation measure and a new tillage support scheme.This marks a significant and direct investment by the Government, evidencing its commitment to the sector.

Having secured a funding allocation for the new tillage support scheme, my Department intends to consult further with stakeholders on its design and operation in due course. In addition to these measures, tillage growers will continue to benefit from other schemes next year, including the tillage capital investment scheme, ACRES and the organic farming scheme. This year, the budget for the protein aid scheme is €10 million, having increased from €7 million to €10 million annually from last year. Applications totalling €15 million in value and covering approximately 66,000 hectares of cereals and oilseed rape straw were submitted under the straw incorporation measure and the Department made the decision to approve payments to all eligible applicants. In February of this year, I announced €32.4 million in payments under the tillage and horticulture support scheme. The Farming for Water EIP, with a total budget of €60 million, is supporting targeted on-farm measures to improve water quality. Over 1,400 tillage farmers have expressed interest in establishing cover crops under this initiative in 2025.

As I mentioned at the outset, this Government wants to grow and develop the sector in the years ahead. It was for this reason that the Food Vision tillage group was established in 2023 to provide a clear roadmap for the sustainable growth and development of the sector while improving its environmental footprint. The report of the Food Vision tillage group is a comprehensive document containing 28 action points across several themes. It identifies opportunities for growth, including the development of new value-added opportunities for Irish tillage crop output to strengthen the sector’s long-term sustainability.

My Department continues to engage with stakeholders to progress the implementation of these actions. As it is an industry-led report, its success will depend on continued collaboration and sustained effort from all stakeholders.

Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for his detailed reply. He is correct. His Department has been very supportive over the past number of years in introducing new schemes to support the tillage sector, in particular the straw incorporation measure and the protein aid scheme. Those schemes, in the last year, amounted to roughly €10 million each. The announcement of the €50 million is very welcome and there seems to be, within the tillage sector, a kind of understanding that, of the €50 million, €10 million will go to the straw incorporation measure and €10 million will go to the protein aid scheme, which leaves around €30 million for the tillage scheme. If the Minister of State is going to be tightening the measures or working with farming organisations to make sure people who really need it get it as opposed to everyone getting it, that increases the individual level per acre that people are going to be paid, which is very welcome.

We all know it is an incredibly difficult time for tillage farmers. I was speaking to one tillage farmer of five or six generations. He said that, for the first time in his life, he was really not sure if there was a future in it. He loves the farm and loves working on it. As the Minister of State would understand, the farmer has an appreciation that he is just holding the farm until the next generation comes along but he said he was very worried about it. What we need to do, and what the Minister of State has done, in fairness, is set out not just a one-year emergency measure but a long-term plan on how we can support this sector. As has been outlined, there are 11,000 people working directly or indirectly in it and there is a knock-on effect for our economy. In every sector in agriculture, we grow the best quality of food and grain in the world. We need to be able to make sure these good tillage farmers are being supported to produce that going forward.

Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent)
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I know the Senator raised this with me this morning. We had a meeting in the Department recently regarding the tillage industry with the senior Minister, Deputy Martin Heydon. He mentioned that he spoke to the Senator about this and the concerns the Senator raised. I know that, in the area of the country the Senator comes from, there are a lot of tillage farmers who grow grain, corn and things like that. As he clearly stated, the price of renting land has gone up from €200 to nearly €400 and the price of manure and fertiliser has gone up a lot while the price of the grain has gone down. The Minister is very well aware of that; the Senator has raised it with him. The Minister was very adamant in the negotiations coming up to the budget that there would be a substantial amount of money put in there to support the tillage growers. The Minister has made it quite clear that he wants to target it to help the people who have suffered most in this. Some people might not have suffered, given the crops they might have got over the past number of years thanks to the weather, but the Minister is determined to bring a scheme in to help the tillage industry. I acknowledge that the Senator has raised it. I also acknowledge the case he outlined in the House. I will bring it to the attention of the Minister.

Shane Curley (Fianna Fail)
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Gabhaim buíochas leat, a Aire Stáit. Sin tusa críochnaithe. Anois beidh an Aire Stáit, an Teachta Kieran O’Donnell, linn.