AGRICULTURE: The Department of Agriculture and Food's €3.5 million increase in its net estimate of €842.241 million has hidden a raft of cuts which has sparked off anger in the agriculture sector.
Farmers will pay increased disease-eradication levies, the rendering industry will pay more for storing BSE-risk material and the meat industry will pay for the cost of testing older animals for BSE.
Teagasc has had its allocation cut from €94.9 million last year to €82.8 million and An Bord Bia, the main food marketing body, will drop from €18.5 million to €16.1 million. The Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, also announced a merger between An Bord Bia and An Bord Glas, the horticulure board.
Mr Walsh said the gross estimate reflected the fact that some expenditures in 2002, which included foot-and-mouth costs, would not recur next year and the relatively healthy outlook for animal disease should also lead to expenditure reductions. Farmers would have to come up with an extra €10 million in levies for the disease-eradication programme which cost €67 million. The beef industry would have to find the €19 million which the department had spent last year testing animals over 30 months for BSE at meatplants.
The market, Mr Walsh said, was demanding animals under 30 months old and he did not see why the taxpayer could continue to spend this money on testing older animals.
The Minister also announced a 19 per cent cut in the funding for the Rural Environment Protection Scheme and said that it had been estimated that 6,700 farmers would join the scheme next year.
The Irish Farmers Association said it had estimated the Government was taking €117 million out of agriculture.
The IFA president, Mr John Dillon, said the cuts undermined the IFA's proposals in the partnership talks."Unless there is a satisfactory response forthcoming, it will be pointless to continue the partnership negotiations," he said.
He said the doubling of the disease levy would be seen by farmers as just more money going into the black hole of the TB industry.