FARMERS were warned yesterday by the Minister for Agriculture they stood to lose at least £200 million a year if Fianna Fail's policy of capping direct EU payments was introduced.
Mr Yates said the Fianna Fail plan, which was aimed at helping small producers, would fail because the average Irish farm was larger than that in most EU countries which would get money due to Ireland.
"The Fianna Fail proposals are incredible particularly since the architect is Joe Walsh who was Minister for Agriculture when the direct payments were introduced," he said when he outlined his party's agriculture policies.
But the Minister's statement was described as "a desperate allegation" by Mr Walsh, the Fianna Fail party's spokesman on agriculture, who said Mr Yates "is the only Minister for Agriculture who cost the farmers £200 million".
Mr Yates and the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, reserved their harshest criticism for the Progressive Democrats' agriculture proposals.
Mrs Owen said the PDs had proposed a reduction of 25,000 people in the public service and this would mean a drop of one third in the staff of the Department of Agriculture over five years.
"The PDs seem to want to pick on the most vulnerable people in our society and last week it was unmarried mothers. This week it is the farming community which is being targeted," she said.
Mr Yates said the priority in a new government would be to have the live cattle export markets reopened and to ensure that the EU milk quota system be left in place until 2005.
On cereals, he would ensure the preservation of arable aid payments, seek more EU support for sheep farmers and prioritise and seek structural funding for pollution control schemes on farms.
Fine Gael was committed to introduce a new category of Extremely Disadvantaged Areas and had submitted a plan to the EU. A White Paper would be published in October on rural development.
His party would also renegotiate higher payments for farmers involved in the Rural Environment Protection Scheme and Special Areas of Conservation.