Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the representatives of the two organisations for their presentations. The focus of the committee is profitability in the beef sector, how we can try to restore profitability in that sector and whether Food Wise 2025 is as relevant in 2019 as it was when it was formulated. I am disappointed that the focus of one of the presentations was on other farmers and trying to take money from another sector and diverting it. That will not solve the issues in the beef sector.

We should examine the beef processors, their attitudes and what they are doing. They have weight limits which clearly indicate that the very big carcases coming from a suckler herd are not what the market wants at present. A significant amount of money has been invested in the past five to ten years in promoting Hereford Prime and Aberdeen Angus beef. The vast majority of them are coming from dairy herds. Like many of my neighbours, I finish cattle. I have no suckler cows. I produce quality beef. I have yet to see a survey that states a steak from a Friesian cow tastes different from a steak from a Charolais cow, or that there is a better taste from a Charolais U3+ or U4+ than there is from a heifer or Angus carcase. Having conflicts between different farmers will only play into the hands of the processors. As other speakers have said, we should concentrate on trying to find solutions and getting money into the sector. At present, everybody involved in beef production is losing money, whether they are in a calf to beef system, store finishers, winter finishers or suckler farmers. As I said recently in the Dáil, the issue is who is losing the least because there is definitely nobody making money.

There are many extra confrontations ahead of us. There is the Mercusor deal in which the Commission seems to be disinclined to defend the position of European beef farmers. There is the complication of Brexit and the lack of access we will have to the UK market, whatever the final outcome will be. Solutions are the way forward, rather than pitting one farmer against another. If beef farmers were to take anything from the dairy sector it should be the price index operated by Ornua. A dairy farmer knows what he should be getting for his milk down to the detail of half a cent per litre. There is a basket of products and that index is publicly available, even though during my time in Ornua some of the processors tried to do away with that transparency. Thankfully, with the farmer representatives on the board we stopped that happening. This is something the beef forum should do. We could have an index in which we could put some type of a fair value for what a carcase is worth to the factories. That includes the fifth quarter mentioned by Deputy McConalogue. The fifth quarter was a huge cost to the industry 20 years ago, but that day is long gone. However, the huge costs to the farmers still remain and there is no gain being attributed to it. There should be much more focus on that.

Teagasc has been promoting cross breeding. When this committee met its representatives last January they were still very defensive about cross breeding and its huge advantages. I am critical of Teagasc on that. Many of its research farms have promoted cross breeding with no reference to the reduction in beef productivity from that breeding. If one takes a 20% cull rate and if one has cross bred one's cows compared with the traditional Friesian breeds, there is a huge loss in the culled cow carcase as well as the loss with the calf.

Sexed semen has been stalled for the past ten years. There has been no movement on it whatsoever. Research has been sorely lacking on the reliability and cost of the sexed semen. As Deputy McConalogue said, factories are starting to promote calf-to-beef schemes from the dairy herd. It clearly shows the focus of factories and they are convinced that, when that produce comes to market, they will be well able to sell it. I sound a warning note on that because the factories said the same about bull beef a number of years ago. Farmers who had bull beef aged 18 to 20 months found they could not find a factory to take them.

The road on which farmers in derogation get lower CAP payments is a bad one to go down. Faraway hills can always seem very green. Dairy farmers traditionally have low CAP payments and a roomful of dairy farmers would have a very different view of the way in which CAP payments are distributed and that historical payments have been extremely unfair to them. There are two ways to look at it but to try to take money out of someone else's pocket is definitely not the way to solve the crisis in the beef industry. We are producing beef for sale at prices under the cost of production and that is unsustainable and needs to be sorted out without deviating money from other sectors. Many of those people have very high borrowings and commitments.

There is a suggestion that farmers should pay for lairage space on the Continent. Calves which left his country in 2018 resulted in payments of more than €300,000 in levies to An Bord Bia and that should be more than enough money to provide lairage facilities on the Continent. An Bord Bia is a promotional body and tries to secure routes to markets for Irish beef. Live exports must be a pivotal one of those routes and there is definitely not enough being done in that regard. We can get large numbers of calves moving.

The reality is that we are not moving live export stock of 12 months of age or older at the moment. One hears of an occasional boat here and there but it is not happening in significant numbers. If we are going to put competition in to trade with factories, the live trade will always help the dead trade and there must be extra focus on that.

We must focus on solutions to the problem of how to restore profitability to the sector. Price transparency in factories is important. We need to get to the root of what the value of the carcase really is to us.

I want to ask a question of Macra na Feirme. A cap of €70,000 on tax relief has been introduced on incentives and concessions on the taxation side, including stamp duty, stock relief and concessions when a farmer had formed a partnership with a family member. That cap of €70,000 can look significant if looked at quickly but is it a stumbling block at the moment for land being transferred to the younger generation? That cap will not be long evaporating when we consider the price of land at the moment and stamp duty of 6%. The introduction of that cap is a retrograde step in trying to attract and give control of land to the younger generation. I would like to get the view of Macra on that. It will slow the transfer of land and land will be left to inheritance rather than transferred. It is a retrograde step. As sure as night follows day, CAP negotiations are ongoing at the moment and a fund will be put aside to give young farmers a top-up. I am not saying I object to that but it will be coming out of other farmers' pockets. On the other side, Governments are putting a cap on incentives to attract young people into the industry and those two policies are opposites; I cannot see how the Commission can say it wants a young farmer top-up, on one side, and then puts a cap on the tax incentives on the other. I would like to get the view of Macra on that.