Coveney gives Connemara farmers the short end of the stick

Date Published: 02-May-2012

FILES released to former Minister Éamon Ó Cuív under the Freedom of Information Act last month, indicate that Agriculture Minister, Simon Coveney, targeted the smaller, lower income West of Ireland farmers for a €25m cut in Disadvantaged Areas Payments (DAS) instead of the high earning dairy sector.

This week, Deputy Ó Cuív exclusively told the Connacht Tribune that the Freedom of Information (FOI) files, clearly indicated ‘without any shadow’ of doubt, that the Agriculture Minister zoned in on the smallest and most vulnerable of farmers to achieve his 2012 Budget cuts in the DAS scheme.

An estimated €25m will be taken out of the farm incomes of over 11,200 families by increasing the required stocking rate from the old figure of 0.15 livestock units per hectare (lu/ha) to 0.3lu/ha – many of those farmers are located in the greater Connemara region.

However in the information provided in the files supplied to Deputy Ó Cuív under the FOI request, the exclusion of dairy farmers from the DAS scheme – similar to the system that operates in Northern Ireland – would have resulted in annual savings of €34m.

“The possibility of excluding certain types of farming enterprises from payment is also considered. For example, we not pay DAS on arable crops and Northern Ireland excludes dairy farmers. If dairy farmers were excluded, the savings in 2009 would have been €34.3m and €34.08m in 2010,” the Departmental memo states.

Excluding the dairy farmers from DAS would have ruled out 12,813 applicants, but this week Deputy Ó Cuív said that the Minister could have achieved his cuts of €29.5m by targeting the larger dairy farmers with an exemption for the smaller milk producers.

“I am absolutely convinced that when push came to shove, it was a case of ‘to hell or to Connacht’ as far as Minister Coveney was concerned.

“These files outline quite clearly that the Minister did have an alternative option open to him on DAS that would not have had such a devastating effect on the incomes of small farmers – sadly he chose to hit the small man,” said Deputy Ó Cuív.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.