Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support my two colleagues, Deputies Cahill and McConalogue, who have raised the serious matter of the way farmers are fixed.

The other day I drove all the way from Drogheda to Kerry. There was not one blade of grass on either side of the road. The fact is cattle have been housed since last September. We need to be aware that is why the knackeries are full. The lorries are on the road now day and night to take dead animals from farmers. It has been said it is being monitored. The time for monitoring is gone because there is not a blade of grass growing anywhere. The Minister has to realise that. I saw a small bit of grass to the west of the town of Macroom, but nowhere else. There is none in Kerry or in Kildare and farmers backs are to the wall. Cattle will not know what the open air is like because they have been inside for so long now.

Dairymen are hit in particular because they cannot raise the protein content in the milk without grass. They will be down five or six cent per litre. That is a fact. Where I come from, suckler farmers provide the beef for the country. I refer to Kerry and all along the west coast. They will not survive if they do not get some subsidy, as the Deputies here said, or some form of assistance. Their backs are to the wall. They have nothing. They are broke, and mentally and physically worn out because it has been the longest time ever that the cattle have been inside. I never remember a winter as long. Look at the ground today. It would take two or three weeks for it to grow, if it started growing today. However, we have more snow forecast for next weekend. I am appealing to the Minister to listen to us because farmers were never in a worse place.