According to Sinn Féin’s Declan McAleer, there is scope to draw down a £70 million farm-support package from the Northern Ireland (NI) Executive.
“But it will require a full meeting of the executive to unlock it,” he said.
McAleer is chair of the Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (AERA) committee at Stormont.
“I am not sure how the farm minister [Edwin Poots] has arrived at this figure. But, obviously, civil servants have analysed the various options.
“While addressing the members of the AERA committee, the minister talked about making the aid money available through the basic-payment mechanism.
“But this approach does not cover all farming sectors.”
McAleer continued:
“The farming industry needs a crisis response. Westminster has made an additional £300 million available to allow NI cope with the cost-of-living crisis that is now unfolding.
“Agriculture has a right to receive a proportion of this money. But we need a full meeting of the Stormont Executive to make this happen.”
However, Minister Poots has said that a Stormont aid package can be made available to farmers without the need for an executive meeting.
He is firmly of the view that Stormont’s finance minister, Conor Murphy, has the authority to make the money available right now.
Murphy, however, is claiming that a full Stormont Executive meeting is needed to allow the release of the envisaged funding package.
And, he has the advice of NI’s attorney general to back him up on the matter, he said.
The farm minister recently discussed the depth of the financial crisis now unfolding within agriculture with members of the AERA committee.
Courtesy of his presentation he made it clear that farming businesses, particularly in the pig sector, will go out of business, if they do not get significant government support as a matter of urgency.
Poots is also calling on the supermarkets to take a greater proportion of the pain that now exists within the farming and food chain.
In other words, retailers should be prepared to pay farmers higher prices while not passing on the full impact of these increases to consumers.
The minister has justified this assertion on the basis of some supermarkets making £1 billion profits over the past 12 months.
Minister Poots has also met with Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Secretary of State George Eustice over recent days to discuss the economic crisis now taking grip throughout the North’s farming sectors.