Michael Fitzmaurice: Farmers' Fuel Support - Payments Arrive 'Weeks'

Minister, before the extension, your 33,000 farmers, am I right in saying 21.5 million is what they'd be, going by the figures you're giving at £6.50? So, well, the figure the £6.50 is coming from is the indicative figure that I gave at the start, which was 20 cent a litre. And indicative is the word, Deputy, I'm not being... Am I right in saying 33,000 farmers multiplied by £6.50 on average that you've said already would be about 21.5 million, is that right? Yeah, and contractors at an average of 6,000... I'm just dealing with the farmers first. Yeah, so, yes, if you're working off the... So the figure of £6.50 average farmer comes from the indicative figure of 20 cent a litre. I'm telling you here clearly that 20 cent a litre is not something that, that final figure may not be that. If I can pay more, I will. I set an indicative figure to give a ballpark to people. So you're going to spend in the budget, the full budget you have on everyone, are you? In the flexibility that I'll have available to me and with deeper approval, obviously I have to work through... There's state aid rules that I have to meet and require. Just a question for you. Before the extension, you were saying that contractors were about 6,000 and somewhere bigger, I understand that. How many had you gained when you done that figure? Well, they're paper-based, so I don't have an exact figure. But if you'd done an average, you'd have to know. Yeah, no, so of the ones that we'd had... Yeah, but how many was in at that stage? I know some came in after. I know, but they came in in dribs and drabs. So we've had, I would say we've had a healthy amount of applications to contractors not putting a figure on it now because it might be a bit distortion, or distort figures in the end. They're paper-based, they have to be checked and verified. They're being gone through now at the minute. Have you any, or are you going to look at this? And I know it's over, early on it was said the peak months, because obviously from October to Christmas or January, you don't do slurry and you won't be doing silage and you won't be doing all the heavy usage. Which, when you average it out over the year, reduces the high peak figures of May, June, July. Depends who you are. If you're a tillage farmer, you're missing out on August and September, which are two busy years. There's winners and losers no matter what you do. I'm talking about three months of the big year setting. But what I'm asking is, what you're saying to me is that if it's possible, you're going to try and give more. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, the indicative figure, 20 cent a litre, is the phrase I've always used. So I had others on social media and even a person telling me it was only going to be 7 or 8 cent a litre by the time I... Well, no... So like, you know, I was always clear that there was an element of estimation in terms of how many people would apply and what the levels of usage was. We know there's 105 million litres of markass oil used in the country every month. The estimation around how much of that was in the agriculture side, the split of that between contractor and farmer, there was an element of that was estimation of that. So, you know, I got my allocation. There was a very clear direction from the public expenditure on that and how it's applied. So I have to have negotiations with them with regard to the final figure that I can pay. Are you flexible at looking at, there was a category and there's a certain threshold you have to be VET registered at, right? And if there's contractors that may have started off last year or whatever and they were under that threshold, because you can go up a fairly high threshold without being registered for VET and be a contractor. 42,000, I think. Yeah. And they cannot get into the scheme because they're not VET registered and they may not be a farmer. There'd be very few of them. Yeah, I know, but is it fair to leave someone out? What I'm asking you is, if you have surplus from what you're saying, can you look at the criteria on that? No. The scheme has closed the applications and they're in. And you have to have criteria no matter what your scheme is. So criteria for the difference between a farmer or a farm contractor. But there's no requirement for them to have a VET number if they're not doing enough work. They're still an agricultural contractor, do you understand me? I'm not saying that you give someone that's doing something totally different. They're a contractor, an agricultural contractor by definition. They're working for a farmer, but they're half on that threshold. That's what I'm saying. And just because I have a VET number and you haven't, I get it and you don't. That's what I'm trying to say. Is there any way of looking at that? So a contractor of any scale, a €42,000 turnover in a year is not huge, in terms of scale of work. But you're like a farmer, I guess, if he has 1,500 litres of a turnover in a year. Yeah, so the farmer has identified farming activity. What we had to have here was safeguards in here to make sure that the work is happening on agricultural produce, what meets that criteria that falls in under my department's remit here as well. So I haven't been approached by anybody who couldn't meet the criteria. Could you look at that? I didn't. But who would I be looking for? Nobody has come to me. There was no point in doing that. Sorry, I know that representative bodies would have been very quick to tell me if there was contractors who didn't meet the criteria and couldn't apply as farmers. Because to be smaller, they wouldn't be even in some of these organisations. And this is what you're asking about now. I'm asking the question, that's all I'm doing. From the perspective of, as far as I'm concerned, this scheme has covered those who... Have you anything to do, just the other one is, if you're a cattle dealer, and I know it's not Green Diesel, so I want to be clear on that before I ask the question, it's not to you. If you're a cattle dealer, they were left out of the haulage thing, if you were hauling cattle, if you were buying cattle at the marts and hauling them, because they didn't need a haulage licence. They were left out of the haulage thing, if you were hauling cattle, if you were buying cattle at the marts and hauling them, because they didn't need a haulage licence. They were left out. Is there any looking at that? That's not your area, probably. No, but I did make the case to the Department of Transport around haulage of cattle, haulage of horses, reds as well, and others, and they didn't meet that criteria. But just to be clear, the scheme we're approving the money for here, that we're doing the supplementary estimate, was on our agriculture fuel support scheme, and that was only for Green Diesel. When do you reckon you'll be paying? Weeks. Weeks? Weeks. Good.