About 100 farmers from the Cooley peninsula were in Dublin yesterday to demand additional compensation for the loss of their sheep in the foot-and-mouth cull. They said they also wanted rogue farmers from their area prosecuted.
Mr John Elmore, who led the protest at the Dail, said this was the only way the majority of farmers could clear their names following the statements made by the Department of Agriculture in May saying there had been widespread claims for ewes which did not exist.
It had said that when the 276 flocks in the Cooley were culled, more than 6,600 ewes on which premiums had been claimed could not be found; 17 of the claimants had no sheep at all, 51 farmers had seriously overclaimed and 100 farmers were unable to produce all the ewes for which they had claimed. Mr Elmore, who has left the Irish Farmers Association in which he once served as chairman of the national sheep committee, said these claims were totally unfounded and had cast a slur on the many decent farmers in the Cooley who were being held up to ridicule.
"We hold no torch for those few people who were involved in fraud and we dissociate ourselves from them, but to lump the rest of the farmers on the Cooley into the same barrow is just too much," he said.
There were major discrepancies in payments made to farmers in various parts of the peninsula and in Co Louth, he added. Some farmers had received up to £240 for each ewe and others had received only £120 per head. "We cannot accept that the valuations were accurate and we want proper compensation. We will not have any income for at least two years and we are facing a great deal of expense and hardship in putting flocks back together again." Figures obtained from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development yesterday showed that £6.2 million was paid in 316 foot-and-mouth disease compensation claims covering the Cooley cull, Pro leek and the corridor up to Meigh, Co Armagh.
Fifty-five per cent of claimants (174) received more than £10,000 each; 31 farmers received more than £49,000 each; 24 had received between £49,000 and £100,000 and five received between £100,000 and £150,000.