Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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192. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the status of the €15,000 cashflow loan proposal to farmers who experienced financial difficulties as a result of the milk superlevy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18682/16]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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I am fully aware of the pressures on farmers right now and I have committed to working with all the stakeholders, both at national and EU level, to address these issues and ensure that we continue to have a sustainable and resilient sector. One of my priorities is to support the provision of lower-cost, more flexible finance for the sector. Access to finance was discussed at the Dairy Forum on 21 June, with an exchange of views with the main banks now a part of the agenda at each meeting. Before the meeting I formally launched the Dairy Forum’s ’Financial Management Initiative’, a programme of cash flow and financial management training and advice for dairy farmers. I believe that equipping farmers with better financial planning skills is essential and I am encouraging all farmers to engage with this initiative.

Access to finance was also discussed at the meeting of the Food Wise 2025 High Level Implementation Committee earlier this month which I chaired. This meeting was a good engagement with representatives of the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) and the Irish Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF). Both are now active in the market and my Department, in cooperation with all the other State bodies, will continue to explore additional funding mechanisms for farmers, the agri-food sector and for SMEs generally.

I also recently met with the CEOs of the main banks and stressed the need for them to be flexible in the context of increased income volatility. The banks assure me that they recognise and are responding to the challenges facing farmers in this regard. In addition, my Department is about to publish a request for tender to procure an ex-ante assessment to assess any current failures in the access to finance market in Ireland. This is a first step towards the potential introduction of Financial Instruments under the Rural Development Programme.

With specific reference to the more flexible State aid support announced by the EU Commission, I am working with all the financial institutions, particularly SBCI, to identify new solutions to working capital finance for farmers experiencing liquidity gaps. At this week’s Council of Agriculture Ministers meeting I asked the Commissioner to consider the deployment of a further targeted aid package, similar to that provided last September which gave considerable flexibility to Member States to adopt responses suited to their national circumstances, and I believe such a measure could play a further important role in 2016. The key word here is flexibility and I have called on the Commission to provide flexibility for MS to deploy the targeted aid in accordance with their needs.