This article is from page 21 of the 2006-12-12 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 21 JPG
BUDGET 2007 has been described as “broadly positive” for farmers by the Clare representative on the IFA Farm Business Committee Senan Cunningham.
Mr Cunningham, whose tenure on the Farm Business Committee comes to an end later this month, did sound a note of caution, however, saying that the finer details of some of the proposals will decide how much much real benefit Clare farmers will get from the budget.
“We will wait for the finance bill to be published for the finer details of how the issues will work out on the ground,” said Mr Cunningham. “A lot of the measures had been already agreed under the partnership talks but there was a number of new areas for farmers which could be useful.
These areas include changes to the vat refund system and measures designed to help on small and fragmented farms.
“Quite a number of items were taken from the IFA’s pre-budget submission. This budget will help to improve farm competitiveness and will address some of the problems of scale and farm fragmentation which is a big problem here in Clare,” continued Mr Cunningham.
“The vat refund would be a major Friday 22nd December thing. It will go a long way to counterbalancing the vat paid on fuel, veterinary fees and things like that. A working group was set up between the farming organisation and the Department of Agriculture to look at this issue and we didn’t expect to get an increase until after this group made it’s report.”