The Government will fulfil its commitments to thousands of farmers who are due payments for works completed under the Farm Waste Management Scheme, Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith said today.
Speaking following newspaper reports at the weekend that the scheme has generated a €400million hole in his department's annual budget, Mr Smith said he will discuss the matter with the Minister for Finance and that he would not let down farmers who qualified for the payment.
"This Government will honour its commitments, as we always have in the past, unlike governments of other political shades of opinion who didn't pay the farmers," he said.
"We will be making sure every farmer who has a claim, and who has completed the work to department specifications and meets with conditions of the scheme, will have their claims honoured."
The Farm Waste Management Scheme assists farmers in carrying out work upgrading their slurry storage facilities in line with European rules on nitrates. It was introduced in 2006 with a deadline of December 31st last for the works to be completed.
It has been claimed that the scheme is to cost the State over €500m this year, some four times the €125million figure budgeted for by the Department of Agriculture this year.
Around 17,000 farmers have already been paid grants for the scheme, but another 17,000 farmers have applications outstanding. Each farmer receives an average of €30,000 in grant aid to complete the work.
Mr Smith told RTÉ Radio that a late run on the scheme ahead of the December 31st deadline was the cause of the problem. He said 10,000 farmers applied for grants in a week long period last month, after the Budget had been drawn up, but that the number of applications received earlier in the year had been low.
Irish Farmers Association President Padraig Walshe said he was not surprised by the news, as it has been well known in farming circles for some time. Mr Walshe said it was "absolutely ridiculous" to suggest there was a late surge after the Budget, as applications for funding under the scheme closed in June 2007.
He said it was incorrect of the Government to say the closing date was December 31st, as this was in fact the deadline for the completion of works. He said that farmers were not in a position to offer flexibility regarding the receipt of payments.
"The expenditure has been incurred," Mr Walshe said.
"We offered the Government the option last June of extending the closing date, so that we could look at flexibility in payments, but the expenditure has been incurred because of the insistence of the Government that the deadline stood."
Mr Walshe told RTÉ Radio farmers have spent €2billion on the scheme and that as banks are not offering flexibility in repayments, farmers found themselves in a "very tight situation."
