Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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20. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine when approvals will be provided under the farm safety scheme announced in 2014; the reason for the delay; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18461/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Farm Safety is a critical issue facing farming today and is something that I am seriously concerned about. The current Safety Scheme has been designed to overcome some of the particular hazards which may be present on farms. A total of €12.2m has been allocated to this scheme offering a 40 per cent rate of aid, up to a maximum eligible investment ceiling of €20,000, i.e. a maximum grant of €8,000. As this scheme was introduced under the 2007-2013 Rural Development Programme, very tight time-limits are applicable as far as the completion of work by farmers is concerned. All work must be completed by farmers and a payment claim lodged with the Department by the 31st August 2015. There can be no extension to this deadline. A total of 6,299 applications for aid were received before the final closing date in January.

Over 3,100 approvals to proceed with proposed investments have already issued to applicants and the remaining applications continue to be processed to approval stage, as appropriate, on an ongoing basis.

Processing of the applications for the Farm Safety Scheme involves a series of checks, including checking of farm building sketches to ensure that no internal slurry agitation points, which are a major safety concern, exist in buildings where investments are planned. This is a time-consuming exercise and the quality of many of the sketch-plans submitted has been poor. However, this is an extremely important check to make and where the plans submitted are not clear, my Department’s officials have been contacting farmers individually to clarify the situation on the ground.

There has been no undue delay in processing applications and I am very pleased with the progress made by my Department in the issuing of approvals for what has proved, and rightly so, a very popular scheme among farmers.