Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome the Minister and his official. I assure the Minister that he will never have to check on his official or those like him because they are always working hard. I certainly welcome the €1 million fund. It is a start but it is only a drop in the ocean. I thank the IFA and other organisations, such as Coolmore Stud in my own county which did not export fodder but recently sent it to Clare and the west. We should have seen this problem coming. Coming on the back of a long wet summer, cattle are in for nearly 12 months and we do not have a great deal before that either. I do not agree with my colleague beside me that the Government acted in time. It was way too late. Deputies Ó Cuív and Healy-Rae and I, along with others, have been raising this issue for five or six weeks. Any of us who knows anything about farming knew there was no growth given the temperatures. Indeed the temperatures are still forecast to be very low for the next number of weeks.

I am alarmed. I heard the Minister, for whom I have always had great respect, say on Saturday morning that the banks were ready, willing and able. That could not be further from the truth. I would go along with Deputy Healy-Rae's argument that farm inspections should be stopped. I would then ask farm inspectors to attend at the banks with farmers because there are forms to be filled, the managers with which they deal are gone and all relations between most businesspeople and banks have broken down. We know that. As was said by Deputy Naughten, the merchants are totally overextended with regard to credit so there is a significant problem there. The Minister must bring the Department of Finance into it. He said he had to go to the Department of Finance. The Department of Finance should be in this because this is a national issue and because farming is the area that brought us out of previous recessions. This is demoralising and depressing for farmers and their stress levels are huge. I ask the Minister to send inspectors to chaperone farmers at the bank and see how far they get. Most of them will not get past the counter because the banks do not want to know. They are already removing their overdrafts. That is my experience and I am in business as well.