Livestock marts have been unfairly treated by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine when it comes to the finer details of the ICT infrastructure scheme launched this week, according to independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice.<\/p>\n

Having first been mooted in November of last year, it was expected that marts would receive funding of up to \u20ac5,000.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the matter, he said: \u201cWhile the scheme was a welcome development when it was first revealed last year, I feel that the finer details revealed this week are totally unfair.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been confirmed that investments made by marts in 2020 will not be eligible as part of the scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now the department expects livestock marts to go out and spend more money, that they don\u2019t have, in order to avail of a maximum grant of \u20ac5,000 \u2013 which covers just 50% of expenditure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn announcing the scheme this week, the minister praised livestock marts for providing a critical service to farmers during 2020 \u2013 with online sales taking center stage as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll marts moved online in 2020 to accommodate these online sales, with considerable investments required to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow marts are being told the investments they made last year will not be eligible for this scheme, which I feel is totally unacceptable.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarts have already borne the brunt of the costs and continue to make excessive payments when it comes insurance etc. When this scheme was initially mooted, marts welcomed it as a needed boost.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I fear that the uptake will be very little as marts may not have the funds to make further investments in ICT this year having already done so just a few months ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am calling on the minister to review the terms and conditions of this scheme to make it more beneficial for marts,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

For further information contact Michael Fitzmaurice at 086-1914565\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Livestock marts have been unfairly treated by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine when it comes to the finer details of the ICT infrastructure scheme launched this week,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3439,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438\/revisions\/3439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}