Partnership deal worth €300m to farmers - Walsh

Proposals made to farmers in the social partnership talks are worth about €300 million to farming interests, according to the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh.

He told the Dáil that the difficulty in the talks was that the farming community sought a deal which would have cost more than €1 billion.

"Like all other participants in the partnership talks they were not able to get as much as they sought," he said.

"Having regard to everything concerned, €300 million is reasonable, taking the budgetary situation into account."

The Minister was responding during Question Time to Fine Gael's Agriculture spokesman, Mr Billy Timmins, who said the farming community was "quite rightly outraged" by the "complete desertion of a community that has suffered an income loss of 8.5 per cent in the past year, probably the only section that has suffered as much".

Both the Taoiseach and the Minister have repeatedly appealed to farmers to join the social partnership.

But Mr Timmins asked if the Minister, "in all honesty", really expected the farming community to enter the partnership, when all he offered was "aspirational commitments to negotiate on its behalf with respect to the mid-term review".

There were additional costs for BSE testing - and also because of the Government's withdrawal from subsidising the rendering of meat and bonemeal.

Mr Timmins repeated the call for a reversal of the decision to double disease levies, as a "small, tangible measure".

What some "view as a U-turn can be viewed by others as innovative and decisions can be made in the climate of the time", he suggested.

Farmers pay a levy on every animal killed as a contribution towards a disease eradication fund.

Mr Walsh, however, insisted that "tangible and solid commitments" had been made.

The value of the package to farmers would be worth about €300 million over the lifetime of the partnership.

The Minister added that the total cost of measures for this year on disease eradication were about €216 million.

Increasing the levy from €10 million to €20 million in the context of a €216 million commitment was reasonable.

The Green Party leader, Mr Trevor Sargent, said the choice being offered to the farmers in the partnership seemed to be "like it or lump it".

Some level of "olive branch should be offered in what seems to be a very dangerous stand-off".

There was a need to recognise the low morale in farming. He believed the disease levy should be put "on the table for withdrawal, review, discussion, to see if it is worth the money that has been brought in".

He said there were many options the Minister should consider before "closing the door".

Mr Walsh replied that "I am a little disappointed with the Green Party which seems to want everything, but does not seem willing to pay for it".

The €300 million, over the relatively short lifetime of the partnership, took account of the loss of revenue for farmers and the constraints on the public finances, Mr Walsh said.

Each of the four pillars had their own demands and the sum of them all would have resulted in large-scale Exchequer borrowing, he added.

"We have to be reasonable, and going back to excessive borrowing would hit farmers more than any other sector."

The Minister referred to suggestions that significant EU funding could be lost to Ireland from Brussels-funded schemes.

"It is true that REPS expenditure is behind schedule, but this reflects low demand - my Department has turned nobody away," he said.

REPS is the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme, which provides grants for farming in an environmentally sensitive way.

"I am firmly of the view that all available EU funding can be drawn down to the overall benefit of the farming community," Mr Walsh added.