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

I welcome the representatives from the ICSA, and Macra na Feirme. I thank them for coming in to recognise and highlight the issues that need to be addressed by Government and the EU. Pressures are being felt by farmers as a result of Brexit with all the talk of whether the UK is coming or going. There is so much indecision and so much that is unknown, that it is hurting and reflecting in the prices farmers are currently getting. There are so many issues that need to be addressed by the Government and by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I spoke earlier about lairage for young dairy-bred calves. In 2013, the former Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, told dairy farmers that they would have to expand, that they could expand and that there would be markets for their milk, but he never realised that those extra dairy cows would produce calves that would be in competition with the suckler farmers.

I worry about suckler farmers in rural areas such as south Kerry, west Cork and that entire area. Given the effort they put into producing good quality beef cattle weanlings I would honestly say they are supplying half the country with beef cattle, up the midlands and at other marts in Castleisland, Cahirciveen, Milltown, Kenmare and all that side of the State. They are touch and go and going out of production because they are not making it farming. They are not recovering their costs. This is starting to have an impact. In Cahirciveen, for example. there is one school where only two children presented last year as new children going into the school. There was an IFA meeting in Sneem recently where eight people attended. Those eight people were over 75 years of age. This is what is happening in rural Ireland currently. Young people are leaving in droves. They are not interested because they cannot see any point. They would like to take over the places into which their fathers and mothers have put so much, including slatted sheds and other improvements to the highest standards. They put in every bob that they had, and that they did not have, to keep up the standards and to comply with environmental regulations. All of that will go for nothing if we as the legislators in the Dáil, the Government and the Minister do not wake up to see what is happening in those places. It is unreal. They are under savage pressure and they are a dying breed.

A lot of things have happened, and a lot of things will happen, but one thing is assured - the level of activity in the places I represent will die altogether because the suckler men will give it up. They cannot stick it. The books will not balance and they are not able to keep going. Another meeting was held to discuss the new beef plan. Between 300 and 500 people attended similar meetings. It is only that they are so busy now with calving cows and lambing sheep or those meetings would still be going on.

The problem has not been addressed.