How not to design a grant scheme
Over 4,000, presuming that everyone in the organisation’s huge staff mucked in to manufacture the Farm Waste Management Scheme.
It was guaranteed to get a big response from farmers when launched more than a year ago. They were punch drunk since the Nitrates Directive had been adopted three months earlier, with warnings of prosecutions and jail sentences if farmers broke any of the hundreds of Directive rules.
But they were given an amnesty until the end of 2008 — by which time they must have put enough waste storage in place for their livestock.
At today’s farm profitability levels, the cost of putting sufficient storage in place would never be recovered by many farmers — so a grant scheme to reduce the cost was the only answer. This was duly announced, with much fanfare about projected expenditure on farms of up to €250 million. The grants would cover 60% of animal housing and waste storage expenditure up to €120,000 per farm, and up to 70% in Counties Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim and Monaghan, where an even stiffer version of the Nitrates Directive would be enforced.
With hindsight perhaps the first mistake was to announce a December 31, 2006, closing date for applications. An earlier deadline might have worked better.
The number of applications was 48,580. Perhaps because of the closeness of Christmas there were major bottlenecks in applying for each farm waste project, with some planners finding that architects or engineers were snowed under, and refusing to take on new work.
Last November the Department responded, allowing a March 31, 2007, deadline for written confirmation that a planning application had been lodged. Nevertheless, hundreds of farmers are believed to have lost out in the last minute rush to apply for grants.
There was also a very high level of incomplete applications, not just by farmers, but by consultants also — probably par for the course with the Department’s complicated application forms.
Some may have just thrown up their hands and given up, after the latest of a comedy of errors — the soiled water issue in early December.
It emerged that the Department and Teagasc had significantly different definitions of soiled water.
As a result, applications made by thousands of farmers, particularly those in winter milk production, had to be revised. The Department — now looking like they were making this scheme up as they went along — had to introduce yet another new deadline, the end of next June, for farmers to notify them in writing if soiled water modifications have to be made to their grant applications.
Before the March 31 deadline, farm advisors were swamped with Farm Waste Management Scheme work in a period which unfortunately coincided with a heavy work load of applications for REPS and the Single Farm Payment, and the On Farm Investment Scheme.
So, Friday, June 29, also became the new deadline for submission of all drawings and confirmation that planning permission had been applied for.
Eventually some farmers made their way successfully through the grant application procedures, and grant approvals began to issue to them. Unfortunately, these contained no indication of the level of grant that would be issued.
To appreciate how much of an issue this is for farmers, it must be borne in mind that construction costs have been rocketing for years, with prices for steel, concrete and contractors’ rates rising at hyper-inflation rates.
Even after bargaining hard with suppliers and contractors (and using the updated construction costings introduced late last year by the Department), grant aid might cover only 40% or 50% of the actual cost of waste facilities. Even if 60% of costs were covered it would take up to 15 years at current farming profitability to pay back for the investment. That could easily stretch to 20 years — which could force a serious re-think by farmers.
Agriculture and Food Minister Mary Coughlan defended the lack of information in farm waste management grant approvals, saying she had to move the process forward quickly to cope with the 48,580 applications. She told the Dáil it would otherwise have taken the next 30 years to process the applications.
That leaves farmers with no option but to go onto the Department website, go through eight pages of costings, and a 24 page explanatory memorandum, to find out what grant they get.
According to Fine Gael agriculture spokesperson Denis Naughten. planners won’t do this, for fear of making a mistake and being sued, so farmers are forced to employ quantity surveyors.
So much for the Farm Waste Management Scheme problems faced by farmers and their advisors. But the story only gets worse when the construction industry’s vital input is considered.
Building all the facilities for which farmers have sought grant aid, before the end of 2008 deadline, is an impossible task according to Bill McEvoy, chairman if the Irish Farm Buildings Association.
It was quite clear to him that in the 21 months remaining it would take 2,500 contractors completing one job per month to met the deadline. He brought the Department down to earth with his blunt assessment: “Anyone who thinks that is achievable is not living in the real world.”
At the same conference Minister for Food Brendan Smith agreed that 2007 and 2008 will be busy for farmers, building contractors and Department personnel. He repeated the deadline of December 31, 2008, for the outright completion of all works and submission of payment claims to the Department — and warned farmers and builders that construction work is very dangerous, and it was essential that the huge volume of work be undertaken without loss of life or serious injury.
Even more lives could be at risk unless the Department now heeds the warning from the construction industry, and makes a commitment to extend the 2008 deadline if farmers and builders end up in a race against time.
