Let’s flash back to June 2016. Michael Creed was only in office a few weeks when handed €11m under the €350m EU emergency fund.

Presented as a “dairy package”, it was used to pay farmers for the temporary cessation of milk production in France and elsewhere.

The previous year, money sent from Brussels as a response to the fallout of the EU-Russia trade sanctions had been paid directly to dairy and pig farmers.

The problem the minister recognised was that, while challenged, dairy farmers were having a much better time than any other sector.

What he did was genius, adding €13m from the Irish budget, and leveraging that to create a €150m low-interest loan scheme

He pledged that the money would support all farmers.

What he did was genius, adding €13m from the Irish budget, and leveraging that to create a €150m low-interest loan scheme.

Announced in the October budget and launched the following spring, farmers gobbled the money up. At 2.95%, unsecured (the €24m essentially underwrote the loans), and with the option of interest-only for the first three years, the low-interest agri-cashflow scheme did what it said on the tin.

Repeating it seemed a no-brainer, so when its successor was announced the following budget, everyone smiled.

The fund would be €300m, to be shared with small businesses that needed to get Brexit ready.

Since October 2017, defeat has been repeatedly plucked from the jaws of victory. The timescale shifted from 2018, to the second half of 2018, to early 2019. It will open at the end of March (possibly post-Brexit, ironically).

The money can only be used for capital spending, and a minimum borrowing of €50,000 is required

The SME element, accounting for the other €250m, has been open for a year now. Only €12m has been drawn down.

The package is worse in every respect.

The interest rate will be about 1% higher and the fund is only €50m.

The money can only be used for capital spending, and a minimum borrowing of €50,000 is required. There is more red tape, with prior approval of loanees from the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) required.

Suspicious

Farmers are suspicious that the banks, unhappy that the first scheme contrasted so sharply with their interest rates and terms and conditions, worked against the second scheme. One thing is for sure, the Department have taken a goalward football, punctured it, and then directed it backwards to the goal being defended by the minister. With his hands seemingly tied behind his back. What a fiasco.