A frustrated and passionate address from Laois TD Willie Aird led to an Oireachtas committee meeting being briefly suspended this week in Leinster House.
Deputy Aird was speaking at the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, where he was addressing his party colleague, Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon.
After a wide-ranging speech that touched on farmer frustration around official application forms, rules on calendar farming, CAP negotiation and the ongoing fear of a TB test, Deputy Aird went considerably over time when giving a recent example of a farmer who had an animal culled.
The bullock in question was weighed and valued at over €3,700 but the Department payment was capped at €3,000.
An angry Deputy Aird was warned by chairman of the committee – Fianna Fáil’s Aindreas Moynihan – that he had gone over his allotted speaking time and wasn’t allowing time for the Minister to respond.
When Deputy Aird continued and ignored attempts from the chairman to stop, Deputy Moynihan suspended the meeting.
It reconvened a short while later with only a brief amount of time allowed for Minister Heydon to respond.
“Farmers and simplification is very important,” said the Minister.
“We are delivering €2 billion supports to farmers every year and that’s not simple.
“That is money that comes with conditionality, is money that needs to be audited for, money that we need to be able to account for has been spent according to how it’s supposed to be spent and the deals be signed up to.
“I understand that creates huge bureaucracy and frustration. It’s my job to try and make sure that in understanding that bureaucracy and frustration for the farmer that we make it as easy as possible to get that money to farmers to support them.
“Support them in the work they do in producing top quality food and also the efforts they’re making, extra efforts around environmental sustainability and beyond, improving water quality and all of those pieces.”
Speaking in the early part of his address, Deputy Aird appealed to the Minister and Department officials in attendance to “please make it easy for us to fill up the forms … whenever a scheme comes out”.
“I think it has been detrimental, I think you have been very hard, I think you’ve been cruel on me as a farmer and all my colleagues in making it so difficult.
“And the proof of that is that when I started off in farming, you’d have an agricultural advisor and you’d bring them for advice.
“And now, there’s nothing that we can do on our own without having agricultural advisors. Why do you make it so complicated?
“It’s very serious, it’s very serious, because it’s not fair to farmers.”
Deputy Aird also hit out at the Department for threatening to cut payments over certain indiscretions, likening the approach to parents warning their children that Santa won’t come.
“While you’re laughing, Minister, it’s not a laughing thing,” added Aird.
“There’s an awful lot of farmers out there, you know, take huge umbrage to that, and they’re right to take it, and I’m one of them.”
He then went on to hit out at the defined calendars in place, whereby farmers are limited to what they can do depending on the time of year and not by the weather conditions.
“Traditionally in farming, we all knew the land like the back of our hands. We knew what the wet field was.
“We knew what day of the year you could go out. We all had to get used to being told when to spread dung, when to spread slurry, when we could go out.
“You can go out on a wet day if you like because it’s within the calendar of farming.
“And it takes a huge mindset to change what farmers did down through the years. Because it was handed down from generation to generation. And you knew every spot in the field.
“And that’s why there was so much resentment and change. And people found it, and still find it, so difficult.
“There are parts of it, that, you know, we have seen, has been good. But there are parts that have really been very difficult.”
And on TB tests, he said “this is the one most pressing things in every one of my farming colleagues’ minds at the moment”.
“Every farmer out there is terrified of a TB test at the moment … you’re talking about the mental strain on farmers.
“It’s all gone wrong. It’s like a runaway train. The mental strain on farmers with getting 10, 20, 40, 50, 60 cows down, not being allowed a second blood test.
“You’re going to have to roll out something. You’re going to have to help farmers, and you’re going to have to ease their mind a little.”
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