The farming community got "a bad deal" from the EU in the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy on the redirection of a proportion of farm subsidies into agri-environmental and rural development schemes, it was claimed yesterday.
Alan Dukes, the former leader of Fine Gael and director general of the Institute of European Affairs, said he resented where the money was coming from in the "modulation" or redirection clause and his view was that agriculture needed supports.
He told the "Surviving or Thriving - Quality of Life Issues in Rural Ireland" conference that agreement on modulation was likely to work to Ireland's disadvantage. He was unsure if the 2004 agreement on agriculture financing would survive the continuing debate on funding to 2013.
"Is the current Irish Government approach to the Financial Perspectives 2007-13 debate over influenced by the fact that Ireland is about to become a net contributor to the union? If so, that will work to the detriment of rural development and the quality of life in rural Ireland," he said.
He added that the real question to be addressed in relation to quality of life in rural Ireland was determining the real rural Ireland or a collage of sectional representations.
Dr Trutz Haase, an independent social and economic consultant, said it was very difficult to determine quality of life and social inclusion as so many factors had to be taken into consideration.
A unique programme he had designed allowed data from three national census returns to be used to determine a new deprivation index for the Republic of Ireland which took on board all the necessary factors
The conference was given details of a quality of life survey on the rural development areas, Waterford, Cavan, Monaghan and west Cork.