Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is welcome and we need to hear that. The farmers who are struggling, wondering if they should sell off their cows, which will have a further impact on our capacity to produce the levels of beef set out in 2020, need to hear it even more. If the suckler cow is sold and farmers decide to move into some other enterprise or away from farming altogether, the crisis will be even worse. The dairy sector has always taken the view that it would manage on a five year basis. If there is a trough this year, it looks to the peak next year because it looks to the world market. The beef farmer cannot do that. I know a bit about this because the county I represent is probably one of the premier counties for the suckler herd. I talk to farmers regularly who see no future in beef. They see no strategy from this Government and therefore many feel that the only alternative is to dispose of the suckler cow and move on with their lives or discourage their sons or daughters from taking over the suckler herd. That has real potential to be an interruption or shock to the targets projected in Harvest 2020. It will require some intervention. Deputy Ó Cuív’s proposal for €200 per head for beef genomics is one measure that will help to improve the output of the beef produced and guarantee, in so far as possible, an appropriate level of return to the farmers. The retention of the Friesian bull effectively for beef here in 2012 did not happen last year and therefore we will see some improvement but there is deep concern about what will happen in the future.

The Minister has to tackle the factories and the supermarkets. There is no transparency about how they report their profits or how they succeed in doing one thing in the UK and something completely different here. The farmer here is taking all the pain. There is effectively the same set of producers, almost the same set of supermarkets and at a certain point there is only 100 miles between our two islands, less to the north of England. We largely produce the same quality - better quality, I would argue.

There is a role for the Minister. He has to force the factories to deal with this. He also needs to consider competition between live exports and beef processing. I know he has been making considerable efforts to improve the overseas market. He has talked about the United States as a potential market but with the best will in the world only a couple of thousand tonnes will go to the US. He was there recently and is going to China again, having been there last year, but not an ounce of beef has been sold to China yet. I accept that the relationship with the Chinese market takes time to build and I wish him well with that.

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