Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome my former colleagues to the committee. Mr. Comer gave a detailed presentation on the long-term and short-term issues. I agree with Deputy Penrose in that I would like more background on the farm management deposit scheme. Unfortunately the back end is coming and there is no cashflow on farms to pay the tax bill at the end of October. Many farmers will try to obtain loans from their banks to pay income tax, which is unsustainable. The farm management deposit scheme is a policy initiative on which I would like more background information.

We have been hearing about the power of the multiples, tackling the multiples and regulation of the market for a long time.

We have heard about this for a long time and through tackling multiples. We regulated our liquid milk business 20 or 25 years ago, which has done nothing for farmers.

People talk about regulation and the power of retailers and multiples. I have been involved in the liquid milk trade for a long time and we are being squeezed out of existence. The market is supposed to be regulated. Someone will have to convince me that regulation can bring protection to primary producers because it has not worked in the liquid trade. We pay our levy as producers to the regulatory body and it has given us absolutely no protection.

The beef forum was established and made a couple of recommendations on age and weight restrictions, which factories have completely ignored. There has been no improvement for the producer side following from the beef forum. There is a quality assurance scheme, but unfortunately a lot of cattle leaving farms do not qualify for the payments. We have now gone down the road of dairy quality assurance schemes as well. For a farmer involved in dairy and beef, only 20% of the stock that leaves the farm qualifies for quality assurance payments. That is something that has to be looked at. If a farm is quality-assured, all produce leaving it should qualify for premium. Farmers go to the expense of bringing farms up to the required standards, and to receive payments for only a percentage of the stock is completely unjustified.

Active discrimination against Friesian cattle is creeping in in the different schemes that are being established. Fianna Fáil representatives met the Irish beef industry some time ago and it was evident that there was a total bias against Friesian cattle. Fortunately or unfortunately, in the future, larger numbers of cattle that are finished in this country will be Friesian. Like the beef breed in the past, there will be another stick to beat primary producers with, in that there will be active discrimination against those cattle.

Farmers are facing many issues. At the end of the day, we have to face up to the principal issue - namely, that we are being asked to produce at world prices but we do not have world costs of production. That is something which has to be focused on and will be the main issue in the future. If one buys a tractor in Russia or in this country, the difference in cost is immense. Whether it is producing grain, a bullock or a litre of milk, Western European farmers are being asked to do so on a different cost of production plane compared to many of those with whom they are competing. If our family farm structure is to survive, that issue has to be addressed. The Commission has a responsibility to European producers to address that, and it is something on which we need to focus more.