I got a letter from a very concerned farmer this week who was about to apply for grant aid before the early March deadline next week. He has planning permission for increased slurry storage for the last two years and is ready to start work as soon as he gets grant approval. His adviser emailed the Department this week to ask when might grant approval be forthcoming and was told four months, so July at the earliest.

To think there are farmers willing to invest thousands of euros in additional slurry storage and they simply can’t put a shovel in the ground until July makes no sense. With the spotlight firmly on environmental and sustainability urgency in agriculture, to prolong this sort of investment seems absolutely ridiculous.

So my farmer is well ahead of a lot of other farmers that have work to complete with planning permission granted. Yet it will be at least July before any work commences. We all know this sort of work is very weather dependent and also very dependent on the availability of builders and contractors.

There is a very good chance this farmer won’t get his investment completed in 2025. The minister must fast track the grant aid application if we are serious about hoping to improve water quality and give farmers options on spreading times.

Planning exempt

In August last year, former Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue said changes to planning regulations would be made to allow standalone slurry storage applications to bypass the requirement for planning permission as part of the Government’s plan to retain the nitrates derogation.

At the time, the then-minister said a new and separate ‘exempt development’ threshold for standalone nutrient storage would be provided for, as part of a review of planning regulations, following the enactment of the Planning Bill. That Planning Bill was subsequently signed last October. Now we hear there is the possibility the exempt development promise might not be enacted until Autumn 2025.

Given the uproar from the general public on housing shortage, we saw the Government move last week to relax planning for temporary structures in back gardens all around the country. The strength of wider public opinion forced the Government to make a move.

We need something very quickly on the nutrient storage side of the house for farmers. Increasing slurry storage on farms has been staring us in the face for the last three years as an easy win on water quality, but the Government doesn’t seem intent on making it happen. Think about it – this increased grant aid and separate €90,000 grant ceiling was announced in early October 2023. The fact is, it might well be October 2025, a full 24 months later before a slurry tank is in place.

This a real national travesty at a time when the airwaves are full of an unused National Gallery scanner. This scanner is undoubtedly a waste of public money but pales into insignificance beside the silent Government inaction on fast tracking grant aid and planning.

At farm level, we have increasing costs of building materials, limited builder availability and mixed weather that often takes construction out of farmer control.

The third and final point on slurry storage is that some of the farmers that could badly do with additional slurry storage are locked out of grant aid. We also know that Teagasc and the Department are going to increase slurry storage requirements further very shortly.

We know that better use of nutrients is essential so why lock out these farmers that need additional capacity now? It’s farcical. We are all supposed to be in this water quality drive together.

The Government, the Departments and the new Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon badly need to sort out both the planning exemption promise, and the grant approval delays. Opening the funnel wider to make more farmers grant eligible as a matter of urgency would also bring significant benefits for the environment and farmers.