The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has been criticised for the eligibility conditions for the Traditional Farm Buildings Scheme (TFBS).
The eligibility criteria for the scheme requires participants to also be part of one of several other programmes.
These include the Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES); the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS); and the Hen Harrier, Pearl Mussel, and Burren projects.
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has hit out at these conditions, saying that reserving places in the TFBS for farmers in the above schemes is disappointing.
Dennis Drennan, the association’s deputy president, said that the linkage between the TFBS and the other schemes “has no basis in logic, or commitment to built heritage”.
According to Drennan, a farmer’s right to apply for the TFBS should be dependent of their participation in schemes “aimed at completely different elements and to a completely different end”.
“What would be wrong with just opening up this scheme…to all farmers instead of using it as another slush fund to corral farmers into approved directions and sectors? There’s something very irritating about the way that state funding is more and more being allocated…on this two-tier level.”
“[We] do not see how shutting out any group of farmers from even applying to the [TFBS] helps in the preservation and restoration of our unique farming-related built heritage,” he commented.
The ICMSA deputy president added that the exclusion of some farmers is “actually working against the broader environmental and heritage policy that the department so vociferously claims to support”.
“We just don’t understand this. In our experience, farm families want to reinforce and support their heritage, both natural and built,” he said.
“But the government seems determined to knock back that desire and instead concentrate on sub-dividing and excluding.”
“Where everything points to getting more people on board, the Irish government’s policy seems to be about shutting the door and making it more and more difficult to do what’s possible as well as what’s right and beneficial,” Drennan added.