Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:44 pm on 29 January 2020.
We'll start with the capital funding. So, I've said all along that we will be able to provide additional capital funding in relation to this, but not to bring farms up to the legal standard now, because, at the moment, we've got data that's being collected through our Natural Resources Wales dairy officer visits to the farms, and that indicates approximately 60 per cent of dairy farms lack sufficient slurry storage now. So, I'm not giving additional funding to bring those farms up to the legal capacity. However, I said all along, both in this Chamber and outside, that we will look to provide some additional capital funding.
I go back to what I was saying about 2019: it's 157, but that figure has not yet been finalised, as some cases are still under review. So, that is not the final figure, I believe, for 2019. Again, I've spoken about this many, many times with stakeholders, with the farming unions. I want to work in collaboration with them. We've had the voluntary approach, it hasn't worked in the way that we wanted. One of the reasons—. We did say we would announce this at the beginning of January, but because we were getting more and more evidence—. You referred to the fact that there was a pause, it wasn't a pause, I just wanted to make sure that the advice that came to me was as thorough as we could possibly have.