FARMERS WHO have lost fodder in floods can expect to get money within the next two weeks from the fodder aid scheme, Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith said yesterday.
At the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture where he was seeking a supplementary estimate to bring forward €85 million in payments to farmers before the end of the year, he promised the fodder aid would be paid quickly.
He also told the committee the money he was seeking, which would see €45 million paid under farm waste management schemes and €39 million in the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (Reps) payments, was not extra exchequer money.
He said more than €17 million was part of the EU co-funding contribution to expenditure on the disposal and destruction of livestock and pigmeat product withdrawn from the market in December last year because of the dioxin scare.
“There was a facility of €180 million given to the department based on the best estimate of the withdrawal of 46,000 tonnes of pigmeat, but that looks more like 30,000 tonnes now and so there are savings,” he said.
He said that while the department would face liabilities in future, these savings were available now and could be paid to farmers. He said other administrative savings at his department included the reduction of 380 staff which resulted in savings of €6.5 million and there were savings of €2 million in the cutting of travel subsidies.
He said other money to pay the farm waste management scheme and Reps would be transferred from other areas in the department where money had not been spent.This year, he said, farmers had received the highest ever payment from Brussels, with single farm payments reaching €1.228 billion. With other payments added to this, the total would exceed €2 billion.