Suckler funds are confirmed

Minister Brendan Smith has confirmed that the Suckler Welfare Scheme will continue in 2010 at the rate of €40 per animal and that payment will issue early in the new year for 2009. He reminded all farmers in the scheme of the need to continue to use the Animal Events System to register calf births from January 1 and to meet the various requirements under the scheme in order to ensure that they will qualify for payment in due course. "This scheme has been successful in its first two years. The high standard of animal husbandry on participating farms is showing through when weanlings are sold," said Minister Smith. He went on to say that the quantity of breeding information (a combination of ancestry, bulls used, performance data and weanling quality) now being collected on farms around the country and submitted to the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation is already making a huge contribution to improvement in the genetic quality of the suckler herd. "The real pay-off will be in the long term and it's vitally important that we keep up the flow of data to the ICBF and at the same time maintain the high standard of animal welfare for 2010," he said. The minister also urged farmers to take the opportunity of using better genetics in their herd by making use of ICBF services, for example the bull search facility on the ICBF website (icbf.com), which he said is easy to access and use. Budget 2010 Moving on to discuss the 2010 Budget, Minister Smith pointed out that it "protects the vital agricultural schemes" and showed that the government recognised agriculture has experienced a difficult year, as reflected in the decisions to: maintain spending on the Disadvantaged Area Scheme at the 2009 level of €220m; continue the Suckler Cow Welfare Scheme payments in 2010 at the 2009 rate of €40 per animal; and continue payments to existing REPS' participants and to launch a new agri-environmental scheme in 2010. While discussions with the European Commission on the new agri-environment scheme, were continuing, "the Minister for Finance has agreed to provide for the launch of the new scheme at a rate of up to €5,000 for approximately 10,000 participants, which corresponds with the numbers leaving REPS in 2010". The minister emphasised that €330m will be spent on agri-environment schemes in 2010. The apparent reduction in the estimates provision reflects the €39m brought forward to 2009 in the Supplementary Estimate, which will be of assistance in improving the cashflow situation of thousands of farmers. All existing REPS contracts will continue to be honoured and the amount being spent on REPS in 2010 will again be among the largest amount ever spent on the scheme in any given year. Having brought forward, from 2010, €45m in expenditure under the Farm Waste Management Scheme, Minister Smith said that the 2010 estimate provides for the payment of the remainder of the second 40% instalment of the deferred payments, which will be paid in January 2010. By then, approximately €1bn or almost 90% of the total grant aid, which is entirely Exchequer funded, will have been paid. The Supplementary Estimate, approved by the Dáil last night, provided for an additional €15m for the Farm Improvement Scheme in 2009, bringing to €30m the total expenditure on the Scheme this year. The 2010 Estimate allocates a further €19m to the scheme, an increase of €4m (27%) on the original 2009 allocation. The estimate does not include EU funding of €1.34bn, which will bring total expenditure by the Department in 2010 to over €3bn. The Department has paid approximately €1.24bn in the 2009 Single Payment Scheme (SPS) or 99% of the total SPS budget.