Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the establishment of the agrifood regulator, which is long overdue. I welcome this draft Bill and the measures included in it that will improve protections for farmers and all of our other food providers in the agriculture sector.

It is essential because when you are looking at the agrifood chain it is the farmers in the supply chain that are consistently squeezed. They are the ones who are facing huge increases in the cost of production, and you do not have to look any further than the significant increases they are paying in their energy costs to see that making even the smallest amount of profit is a struggle for them. We know that the profit is being made somewhere in the supply chain, so this aptly named Agriculture and Food Supply Chain Bill 2022 should bring about more transparency on where the profits are being made along the way.

I welcome the regulator's responsibilities under the Bill to publish reports, therefore, particularly that they will be published on a regular basis because we have so many other quangos, for want of a better word, that just do not produce anything. I want to see the regular reports and I want to see the analysis on the prices produced in those reports being openly and transparently debated and discussed. For too long, where profits were made in the agriculture sector has been shrouded in darkness and the people who have always been kept in the dark, because they did not have a voice, are the ones who are producing the food for the retailers and consumers. Sadly it is the farmers and the other providers that are impacted the most by this lack of transparency. The establishment of the regulator will be worth it if it does nothing else other than achieve this one objective of bringing about more fairness in how the profits are distributed along the agriculture supply chain.

What is most important and welcome is that the regulator will have enforcement powers. I know the Minister has just left but in recent months he has made a variety of statements espousing that this new body will have real teeth in being an advocate for farmers and all of our producers. For this to be the case once the body is established and up and running, it needs to show us that it will not be afraid to use its enforcement powers. That includes imposing significant fines on retailers that are found to be engaging in unfair trading practices with producers. It also includes keeping them quiet and gagging them from expressing their opinions on how it is to be dealt with.

With that in mind, the members of the committee that will be established need to be chosen exceptionally carefully as they will be the ones who will be charged with carrying out the functions of the regulator. As an aside, I want to welcome the final subsection of section 21 of the Bill, which states: "The Minister shall aim to appoint an equal number of men and women" to the committee. It is about time we got that to being the norm.

I agree with the Minister that we are all on the same page. It is essential that this regulator has real teeth because the agrifood sector is worth protecting. We have 170,000 people employed in the sector and we have 130,000 active farms across Ireland. We have buckets of beautiful produce that Senator Murphy has talked about and that we all, to some extent, take for granted. We should not take it for granted. If we do not protect these producers and their profits and livelihoods, then at the end of the day we will not have them. We cannot argue and bemoan that in a couple of years when we only have Spanish onions. We need to protect our own producers.

I met a number of growers last Friday, just coincidentally, in Fingal, just outside Malahide. They welcome the introduction of this and they finally see a space where somebody will have responsibility for investigating these unfair trading practices they have been complaining about. They need a renewal of the horticulture exceptional payments scheme, HEPS, that was introduced last year to provide them with short-term survival. The conditions have not changed for these growers since first HEPS was introduced last year and we need a renewal of that scheme. We all know the money is there, not least in the Brexit fund, but we have a significant surplus this year as well. I am calling on the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, and the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, to confirm that we will see a second round of payments under HEPS. Growers will simply go out of business if we do not provide it to them. Providing long-term regulatory frameworks, which we are doing in this Bill, is great but little by little we are seeing growers go out of business and telling us they are losing money in growing crops to produce food for us, the consumer. That is a crying shame. This Government has been hugely supportive of individuals and businesses in the last 18 months but we need to continue to do so when the environment is still impacting on people being able to make a living.

I welcome the appointment of Niamh Lenehan; she has a fantastic track record. I want to concur with what Senator Murphy said earlier; that this is genuinely a good day. When this Bill passes and this regulator is established it will be a really good day, not just for producers but also for consumers, to make sure there is fairness and transparency in the provision of food that we all need. We have Food Vision 2030 targets and we all need to see everybody getting a good and fair deal all along the way. I commend the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, and all of the officials on getting this to where it is today. Let us get this agency up and running as quickly as we can and let us see the teeth we know it will have.