This article is from page 39 of the 2007-03-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 39 JPG
THE courting of the farming vote continued this week with two Clare General Election candidates making statement on the Farm Waste Man- agement Scheme.
Deputy Pat Breen (FG) and Sena- tor Timmy Dooley (FF) both issued statements on Thursday, calling for the Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, to extend the application deadline for the Farm Waste Man- agement Scheme.
Early-bird Dooley was first off the mark with a statement calling for farmers to be given more time to get their planning applications together.
“In the past few days, I met the Minister for Agriculture, Mary
Coughlan, to outline to her the prob- lems that farmers in Clare are ex- periencing in making the March 31 deadline,” he said.
“By that date, farmers must have the full details of their planning applica- tions supplied to the Department of Agriculture under the popular Farm Waste Management Scheme.
‘The scheme has been such a suc- cess, with the 60 per cent or more grants available, that agricultural ad- visors, Who help farmers with their plans, are struggling to get through the workload,” the Fianna Fail can- didate continued.
“As a result, farmers are at risk of losing out by not having their plan- ning applications in by the current deadline.”
He goes on to say that he has asked the Minister to extend the deadline by a full three months.
“This would, I believe, be a fair compromise and bring the submis- sion deadline into line with the Department’s final date for the al- teration of plans already submitted or approved,” he continued. “Some 2,600 farmers in Clare have applied under the scheme for new on-farm facilities.”
A mere 15 minutes later, Fine Gael’s Pat Breen was off the mark, saying there was simply not enough consultants available to assist with the huge volume of applications.
“IT am calling on Minister Cough- lan to take into account the very real problems that farmers are experi-
encing in respect of applying for the Farm Waste Management Scheme,” he said.
“They are caught between a rock and a hard place as the deadline is looming but a shortage of consult- ants means that a significant number of applicants will not be able to meet the deadline.”
Alas, Deputy Breen called for a slightly more modest extention of just two months.
“I am not asking the Minister to provide special treatment for any- one,’ he continued. “Rather, I am asking her to consider the real situ- ation on the ground and taking into account the shortage of consultants, and extend the application deadline until the end of May.”