Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Maybe. I accept that. It is the Golden Vale, but young farmers spent €1 million plus on milking parlours, and on proper buildings and roadways, so they could nurture and care for their animals carefully. Many of them were offered these special contract prices with Glanbia and other co-ops. They bought into it and it stood them well, in fairness, for a number of years. Now, however, it is not standing them well and they are suffering. Blackguarding is going on in respect of butter. It is not in the interest of families that milk and butter are being sold cheap. It is in the interests of naked greed and loss leaders or whatever it might be called. It is just a price war and a race to the bottom. The problem is those young family farmers who pay the bills. They pay the contractors and the milk machine men. They pay for concrete and everything that is against the roadways, and for insulation of fittings and everything else.

I will mention a young man - fuair sé bás cúpla mí ó shin - Mr. Colm Ryan. The farmers loved him. He helped out Mr. Tony Condon in his lab with putting in those milking parlours. He was a tremendous worker from Ballymacarbry. It is a very sad situation. Many people did the work and got paid. In turn, they paid the hardware shops and the money went around in a circle. I have to admit that I was and am concerned about some of the numbers people expanded by. Be that as it is, these people were encouraged and advised to expand. What do they get now every hour of every waking day, and when they should be asleep, but to be demonised, undermined and called laggards and blackguards? We saw this week, in some of the papers over the past couple of days, who the real people breaking pollution laws are. We also saw the impact the wetting of the bogs will have on the farmland of people who are up to date with that.

We see a lack of respect for healthy farming practices, and a lack of support, from the Department and Government, which will not bring in any regulations to help farmers. How many times have farmers come to Leinster House cheap? I remember the late Joe Rea, and the other president of the IFA from County Limerick, who released sheep into the foyer of the Department. The sheep sector has been on the floor all year - the pig industry also went through it - mainly because of the price at the other end. That is not the price the farmer gets. The profits are there. When we previously spoke on this, I mentioned that the farmer gets nothing from the fifth quarter of the animal. He does not get aon phingin amháin; he gets nothing out of it. Some of the beef farmers, moguls, factory farmers and those running feedlots are, unfortunately, former leaders of farming organisations who have turned turkey and gone the other way due to greed. Greed is an awful thing. It is a case of to hell with the small, young farmers. If we did not have those young farmers, we would have food shortages, there would be no families in rural Ireland, we would have no schools or GAA matches, and none of the big furore we had about last Sunday's hiding behind the wall. The only walls our lads are behind are silage pit walls and milking parlour walls. It is hard and noble work to provide food for our people to eat but farmers need support. They need to not be kicked around like a football or be played like a hurley.

Now Teagasc is off doing reports it should not be doing at all. There are Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, reports that call farmers laggards and everything else, which is totally untrue. The EPA should look after the 800 plants the Minister admitted this morning that it has in the country, without any treatment plants in towns and villages, and should not demonise farmers.

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