By Des Maguire and Paul Mooney

Significant changes in the new acreage-based Disadvantaged Areas Scheme and in supports for sheep farmers are on the way, the Minister for Agriculture Joe Walsh has predicted.

However there will be no additional support for beef farmers who sold cattle between November and December at prices as low as 75p per lb. before details of the Purchase for Destruction Scheme were finalised and introduced putting a floor of 90p per lb. under the market.

The Minister who was responding to questions from farmers at this week's annual general meeting of the IFA in Dublin conceded that:

"Despite the huge funding of over £1 billion going into the scheme the new Disadvantaged Areas Scheme is unfair to farmers in Mountain Areas. I don't want farmers on the mountains and hills of the Disadvantaged Areas penalised and will address the anomalies that have been thrown up. I hope to have this sorted out before the summer."

Farmers in Mountain Areas can only get a maximum of £2,700 under the new scheme compared with £3,150 in the More Severely Handicapped Areas and have greater losses in the change-over from an animal based scheme to an area based scheme than any other category of farmer. The Minister is now to investigate how these losses can be offset in the mountain areas.

Joe Walsh also revealed that he expects proposals for the reorganisation of the sheepmeat regime from Commissioner Fischler within the next few weeks. This has been confirmed by Commissioner Fischler in an interview in this week's Journal.

It is understood that the Commission will propose simplifying the current sheepmeat regime by adopting a fixed headage premium instead of a deficiency-type payment system.

While refusing to go into details Commissioner Fischler told the Journal that it is not in the interests of sheep farmers to continue with the present system.

Joe Walsh told farmers at the IFA's annual general meeting that he had consistently maintained that the EU's sheepmeat policy was flawed and this had been borne out in the report of the independent consultants taken on by the Commission to review the regime.

He said he personally favoured a fixed ewe premium.

Asked whether there would be compensation for farmers who sold cattle at a loss between November and the introduction of the Destruction Scheme from January 10th the Minister said that when the BSE crisis blew up again in November several different interests approached the Government for support.

These included meat factories, shippers, agents, workers losing their jobs, hauliers and other parties. The amount of money being sought was very significant.

"After careful consideration we decided to embark on a two-pronged approach to restore consumer confidence and to put a floor under the market. We will now focus on regaining lost markets for Irish beef where the ultimate solution lies," he said.

On the price of cows for the Destruction Scheme he said it should be possible to look at this and see if the five per cent top-up can be extended to some categories of cows in the future.

He also revealed that since the testing of animals over 30 months began some 17,000 animals have been tested to date with all the results negative.

Meanwhile the Purchase for Destruction Scheme was running smoothly this week with factories being offered individual quotas on the basis of the SRM storage capacity available.