Responding to a parliamentary question from Fianna Fáíl TD Dara Calleary, Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton confirmed that there has been a significant fall off in the number of farmers availing of the weekly payment and that the overall spend for the scheme has dropped by almost €15m.

“The Government launched a very sneaky and mean attack on the lowest earning farmers in last year’s budget,” deputy Calleary said.

As outlined in Table 1, the amount of money paid to farmers has fallen from €113.7m in 2011 to €67.7m up until the end of August. It is likely this figure will settle under €100m for all of 2013.

There are currently just under 11,000 farmers availing of the support, down from a high of almost 12,000, and they have had cuts of €832 per annum to their payment over the past three years.

Calleary went on to accuse the Government of double standards in its approach to cuts to social welfare payments while the country’s decision makers are ignoring small farmers.

“It (the Government) prides itself on not attacking core welfare payments – if you depend on farm assist, this is as core a payment as it gets,” he said.

“The measure didn’t get much attention at the time but I’ve seen on a daily basis how it has impacted on farm families around the country-these figures prove my concerns and my colleagues in Fianna Fail and I will continue to pursue this issue. Small farmers don’t feature on this Government’s radar,” he said.

IFA rural development chairman Flor McCarthy said that the reduced cost for Farm Assist since 2011 mainly reflects the abolition of the income and the child disregards aspect of the scheme.

McCarthy also said the cuts were having a ‘serious impact’ on low-income farmers.

“Their abolition over the last two budgets has resulted in the number of farmers qualifying reducing by 600 and the average weekly payment reducing from €190/week in 2011 to €175/week in 2013,” McCarthy said.

“These cuts have had a serious impact on low income farmers and IFA is calling on the Government to reverse the decision to abolish the disregards in the budget in two weeks time,” he added.