Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Comer for his presentation. He has suggested a European intervention price of 28 cent per litre. Would he consider the intervention price as the number one remedy that would protect farmers from volatility? Would he agree that it should be based on average European production costs? The system we have now was fixed back in 2003. Do we need a system that moves with the production costs, because input costs vary all the time? A fixed intervention cost is not effective. There are arguments made against it that it influences the market. However, if the intervention price were the same as the world market price there would be no need for an intervention price because it could be sold at that price anyway. I am interested in that.

If the Minister does not add to the European intervention, I understand that it works out at about €697 per farmer. If one considers the scale of the losses incurred by farmers, €697 is a token contribution. It is a drop in the ocean compared to those losses, and for someone in significant difficulty it will not have an impact on their finances. We need to be realistic about this. If a farmer is losing €30,000, there is not much point in thinking that €697 will save him. Should the money be given to every dairy farmer or should there be a system of targeting the money at those who are really vulnerable? The common call seems to be to give it out to every dairy farmer, whether they are in financial crisis or not. For a farmer who is doing very well, maybe not this year, but who is generally in a very stable financial situation with very low borrowings and very good productivity, €697 is just a little Christmas bonus, whereas it will not rescue someone who is in significant difficulty. That is the case that has been made. Some cows produce up to 9,000 litres of milk, but if the average cow produces 5,000 litres of milk and a farmer has 60 cows, the turnover will be very small. I am interested in that.

I am glad that Mr. Comer is focused on the retailer issues. This committee issued a report on this. The price issue and the dominance of the multiples is probably the biggest issue faced by European agriculture into the future. I have said this since I became the Fianna Fáil spokesperson on agriculture. The Commissioner has taken that issue up and we need action on it.

The first thing is to show up what is happening because, as Mr. Comer has pointed out, the farmer is getting a smaller and smaller percentage of what the retailer gets.

Would it be helpful if the Commission were to decide that as long as this crisis persists, there would be no payback of the superlevy and it would be deep frozen until prices pick up again? A trigger price could be set at which repayment would begin, but it would be optional to repay and the money would not be sought until a 28 cent per litre figure was achieved by the EU. They would not look for money back until the price went over that. Would that be helpful to farmers who are paying back for excess production of milk in a rather bizarre fashion? Would that be something simple Europe could do without any significant cost to Europe because it would only defer the collection, not write it off? There seems to have been some principle made of collecting that money, which is small beer in the European context but is still a fair bit of money.