While Fianna Fáil TD, Beverley Flynn is calling for an extension of the current REPS scheme or for a new scheme which would replace REPS to be implemented, Fine Gael Deputy John O’Mahony is criticising her move as “giving false hope” saying that she is “talking out of both sides of her mouth”.
The Fine Gael deputy criticised Dep Flynn’s statement — following an emergency meeting in Dublin last Wednesday night when the Minister for Agriculture, Brendan Smith, met backbench Fianna Fail TDs to discuss the growing crisis over the threatened termination of the REPS scheme — that a new agri-environment scheme might replace REPS and that she is calling on the Minister “to extend the current REPS3 scheme for a number of years until such time as the new scheme is ready to put in place”.
Dep O’Mahony said: “On the same day that the Taoiseach refused to meet the farmers and stated that there was no money available for REPS 4, Dep Flynn was offering hope to farmers in Mayo that REPS would be reintroduced or replaced by a similar scheme of the same value.
“If Fianna Fáil really cared as much about farmers in Mayo as they pretend to, they had an opportunity to vote in favour of a Fine Gael private members’ motion earlier this year which called on the Minister for Agriculture to reverse the cuts imposed on the farming community in the last two budgets. She can’t have it every way and she has to stop talking out of both sides of her mouth. The entire performance would be funny if it wasn’t so serious and people’s livelihoods were not at stake.”
