The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine has been challenged by TDs to explain why some growers were “excluded” from the horticulture support scheme.
The government launched the Horticulture Crisis Fund (HCF) last month to deliver a “once off payment to growers of horticulture that are most affected by the continued high level of input costs”.
But both the Sinn Féin spokesperson for agriculture, Claire Kerrane and the Fianna Fáil TD for Longford-Westmeath, Joe Flaherty, have queried why “certain growers” were excluded from the scheme.
According to Minister Charlie McConalogue while it was recognised that “all horticulture growers had been impacted by the challenges facing the sector” evidence suggests that some vegetables and crops were more “significantly challenged” than others.
Under the terms of the scheme the sectors eligible included brown mushrooms, heated strawberries, field vegetables – excluding potatoes – field salad crops, apples, vertically farmed greens and glasshouse high wire crops.
Funding was only available to commercial horticulture primary producers currently producing in Ireland and who had an annual turnover of €50,000 or more.
Horticulture sub-sectors
According to the Department of Agriculture the total fund available for the scheme was €2,382,460.
Minister McConalogue said: “Given the limited fund allocation it was not possible to support all horticulture sub-sectors and as a result the fund is targeted at those sub-sectors whose economic viability is compromised due to the continued challenges encountered.”
He said the scheme was designed “to ensure the short-term security and thus the long-term viability of these sub-sectors”.
The minister also said he wanted to see the sector “grow and flourish in the years ahead” but farm organisations have highlighted that all growers experienced “the same hugely inflated input costs as other sub-sectors of Irish horticulture” and should have received support from the HCF.
The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) Fruit and Vegetable chair, Niall McCormack, has also warned that “growers are currently harvesting outdoor crops in extremely challenging conditions with losses inevitable”.