Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is not the first time I have spoken on this issue. I raised it with the Commissioner when he came to town a few months ago and I have also raised it in the Seanad on several occasions. I come from Minane Bridge, County Cork, which is three miles from the sea and this issue affected most of my neighbours, colleagues and friends. There are two issues really. One was the weather in September, which involved a sea fog that failed to lift for three or four weeks, and, where people had winter cereals, there was an unfortunate level of devastation regarding salt burning to an extent which had not been seen in many years. Those issues, compounded by poor prices, high moisture and a lack of straw on the ground, made the tillage sector in my part of the world very dysfunctional and drove down incomes. It has been an unbelievable year for tillage and it is a crisis without a shadow of a doubt. When one looks at the figures the IFA has produced that anything up to 4,000 tonnes has been lost, it is clear that there will be a significant downward impact on incomes, which is a huge issue for the industry. As I have stated previously, the tillage industry is on the verge of collapse if we do not do something. That is my view having listened to neighbours and friends in my part of the world. They cannot sustain what they lost in the last four years. The forward selling proposal and prices for next year may not mean any improvement according to the Teagasc reports issued over the last few weeks. The industry is under fierce pressure going forward.

One often hears that the dairy man will do well if the tillage man goes.

That is not the case because the dairy man depends on the tillage man, we need the straw and need that ground regarding peas and kale. We need each other and need it to be interactive so we can all survive in what is a tough job. There is no point saying it is not. To my knowledge, and I am open to correction, this only affects some 400 farmers and affects areas such as south Cork, maybe south Kerry and up the west coast of Ireland. There is a little bit of education required around this event. It was an unusual event and it only happened in very specific areas. It did not happen everywhere and telling the story, even to my own colleagues is a big issue, because people do not realise that this unusual weather event lasted for the month of September from the south side of Cork city to Cork Harbour. That takes a little bit of education. That part of the world is the main grain growing part of Cork. It is an event about which not every member of every party is aware happened. Even when coming to this debate today there was a question mark over what it is all about and we need to get that message out there. Hopefully this debate will go a fair way to actually getting the information out.

Going forward, we need to invoke whatever powers we have to put pressure on the Minister and the Commissioner. When I questioned the Minister on this issue a few months ago his solution was that we could use the low interest loans to help the grain industry. I realise that the low interest loans are available for the grain industry but I do not think borrowing ourselves out of this is the appropriate way for the 400 or so farmers who are so unfortunately affected. We need to go to the Minister and see what can be done. If we must we should go to the EU and I have no issue in sending a delegation from this committee to the EU if required. Something must be done as it was an unusual event and it will have a major and crippling effect on the grain industry in my part of the world if we do not do anything to solve the problem.