Graiguenamanagh Labour party councillor, Ann Phelan has claimed that the new regime for farm inspections to be carried out by the EPA, just announced by environment minister John Gormley is “madness”.
“Farmers are regulated to the hilt as it is and this will cause consternation at a time when farmers are already under pressure from all sides.”
The Government has announced that the Environmental Protection Agency will begin farm inspections, even though the Department of Agriculture and Food already inspects holdings.
The Farmers’ Journal has estimated the cost of an extra 6,000 inspections as €30 million.
“Many farmers are part-time and it is already an awful hassle to be there when Department inspections are taking place. Now there is to be another inspection to be dealt with,” she said.
“I cannot understand why Minister Brendan Smith is handing this over to the EPA and the local authorities when his own Department already carries out really meticulous inspections on farms,” she added.
“It is madness at a time when the Exchequer is seeking savings and I don’t know why the two cannot be combined. Farmers are really under attack from all sides,” she said. “Between more inspections, the falling price of milk and the phenomenal rise in the price for the removal of dead animals, it is just one blow after another,” she concluded.
Deputy IFA president Derek Deane has said that the cost for disposal of dead animals is exorbitant and said that the government had pulled the plug on the fallen animals disposal scheme without putting an alternative in place.
He said the cost of disposing of a dead animal is €190, but that each of those dead animals might have already cost a couple of hundred euro in veterinary fees before it died.
