November 11th 2000

Milk quotas: Dukesforces Dail debate

By Des Maguire

The Fine Gael parliamentary party has succeeded in obtaining a Dail debate next week calling on the Government to provide compensation for the development farmer members of the Milk Quota Rights Group.

The debate will be held next Tuesday and Wednesday and the motion is in the names of all members of the parliamentary party.

A group of 110 development farmers who took the Department to the Supreme Court for failing to provide them with sufficient quota to meet the targets of their development plans are having damages assessed by the High Court at present.

The cases are expected to cost the Department many million pounds.

A second group of farmers represented by the Milk Quota Rights Group who are not party to the proceedings, are seeking equality of treatment with the first group.

They have been told by the Department of Agriculture that no special arrangements have been made for them and that their cases are statute barred.

However the group has been involved in talks with the Department on the possibilities of getting a specific allocation of quota from the remaining 11 million gallons of free quota to be distributed by the Department next year under the AGENDA 2000 reforms.

The Minister for Agriculture Joe Walsh told the Dail recently that they would be considered when the priorities for distribution were being drawn up.

The Fine Gael spokesman on Agriculture Alan Dukes said that the second group of development farmers should get the same consideration as the first.

"At Fine Gael's initiative the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture has unanimously backed their case. In next week's debate I will be urging the Government to stop hiding behind legal technicalities and give these people justice," he said.