Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the president of IFA and the grain growers.

I do not want to be critical. There are two issues here. There is the problem in the grain sector, which is ongoing for a number of years, involving poor prices and the drop in the single farm payment. There are income issues. Last year, the record grain harvest disguised some of the income problems. Then there is the immediate problem of the 400 farmers who, due to horrific weather conditions, have lost most of their crop. When we are making the points, we should divorce the two issues.

The grain sector, as Mr. O'Regan stated, is most important for a number of other sectors in the country. We have lost our beet sector. If one goes back to the fodder crisis we had a couple of years ago, we ended up importing hay from the UK. If we had held our beet sector, that would never have happened because the by-products of the beet sector would have filled that gap. I grew up in a town where there was a sugar beet factory and I recall the smell of the pulp in the morning, the employment it created, etc. We lost that sector. If we do not mind ourselves, we will loose our grain sector as well. Acreage has dropped significantly and straw prices have gone through the roof. I suppose the yield of straw was back.

It shows how important the by-products of the grain industry are to the agriculture sector. We need to have a hard look at where our cereal sector is going.

The points have been well made about the immediate problem of establishing a crisis fund. There are precedents in the horticulture and forestry sectors and there was a fund when EU exports to Russia were banned. A huge fund was put in place for eastern European farmers to compensate them for the loss of that market. We had a robust exchange with the Minister earlier. Deputy McConalogue made it crystal clear that low interest loans should not prevent the setting up of a crisis fund. If I learned one thing today, I learned that. Hiding behind a low interest loan scheme to prevent a crisis fund is not correct. The two can operate in tandem. That is a foundation to work on and that is what we have to do. These farmers have a cashflow crisis with no income coming in. The amount being sought in the overall context is not huge. The ball is firmly back in the Minister's court and this has to be delivered on. Mr. Healy said he was going to Brussels in the morning about different issues, but pressure has to put on there as well. At the end of the day, there is an obligation on the Minister to deliver for these 400 farmers.

The co-operative I supply milk to is a significant purchaser of grain. Any crop sown this winter has been sown on merchant credit. The low interest loan has a part to play in the grain industry going forward but it has to be divorced from the crisis in Cork and along the western seaboard. As Deputy McConalogue said, we will maintain maximum pressure. The debate is going on for a few months and we have not made progress with the Minister. Earlier, he was steadfast that the cheap loans will be in place by the end of January and that was all the comfort he gave to grain growers. That is not enough and every opportunity we get, whether it is in the Dáil or at this committee, we will do our maximum to keep the pressure on. We are going to Brussels tomorrow to meet officials over the next two days. We will raise the issue and see the response from the Commission. One hopes there will be a chink of light to see how this fund can be delivered because fair play is good play. If other sectors got it, why should grain farmers not get it?

Mr. Healy raised the issue of exclusion from the previous targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS. We have to get into these issues to establish where the grain sector is going. A debate on the future of the sector and the very important part it plays in different industries might be the subject of another meeting. Bord Bia representatives made a presentation to the committee a few weeks ago. Cereal growers are a cornerstone of what the board is trying to do with a number of products and we have to do something to protect the growers. We have lost enough acreage and we have to move to protect the industry. When the IFA is lobbying, it should divorce the hardship fund from the crisis. Both have to be dealt with politically and they are very important to the association as a lobbyist. It looks like another crisis in 2017 as we sit here in the final month of 2016. Our grain industry will need material help to get over this crunch. It would be a shame to let it go and we have to do whatever we can whenever we can to highlight it.