Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome also Mr. Dermot Ryan and his colleagues. As Vice Chairman of the Joint Committee on European Affairs, I have questions relating to Brexit that I will pose at the meeting following this one.

There are 3,000 farmers currently awaiting payments thanks to the eye in the sky. There is no question that the Commission's surveillance, through the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, is far better than that of the CIA. People are coming to me asking when they will get their money. Is every other department of agriculture in Europe as overly diligent as the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine? In terms of who is blamed for this, it is the Commissioner, Phil Hogan, with the eye-in-the-sky satellite checking the position. The Commissioner gets little credit for all the good work being done but that issue is causing a problem. A number of farmers in Northern Ireland voted to leave the European Union because of what they perceived to be the overbearance of the Commission. I ask the Commissioner to give a direction down the line for people to lay off the farmers. We are in enough trouble at present and we cannot afford what is happening. I recently met a farmer at the races in Roscommon who has 1,000 sheep. He told me that without the grant from the European Union, he would not be in business. Sometimes we get the negative response from Irish farmers instead of the positive response, to which I believe the Commissioner is entitled.