Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for having had to leave for a meeting of the Business Committee. I am delighted to welcome the witnesses and thank them for their contributions. We are at an important crossroads in Europe. Certainly, I have concerns about some activities taking place under the flag of and with the financial support of the European Union. We need to be more awake, engaged and vocal and to scrutinise more deeply legislation that comes before us on PESCO and other situations. Europe as a project must be preserved. We must work at that and learn from it. A recent report I intend to raise on Leaders' Questions today is on the future of farming in Europe. It states that 1,000 farmers and farm families are leaving farming every week right across the EU. That is leading to the degeneration, neglect and slippage of rural Ireland at a time when we are talking about rolling broadband out to rural areas. If we do not maintain sustainable farm families in rural Ireland, North and South, and across Europe, it will lead to more factory farms and large conglomerates buying up land, which is not good. In my own county of Tipperary, we have an equine company purchasing every square perch of land that becomes available. It has amassed almost 28,000 acres. While it provides employment and has great prowess in the equine industry, it is disgraceful that we do not have a land commission or other land agency to monitor and curtail what is happening. The family farm is the lifeblood of Ireland. In the two previous recessions to the one we have just come out of, it was agriculture that led us back to growth with, I might add, the support of the EU. People were always there on family farms and working the land in parishes and communities nationally. Every euro that goes into agriculture is spent locally. Farm families support schools, sports clubs, the tourism industry and everything else. It is therefore timely to have this discussion. I thank our visitors for attending today. It is my first time speaking in this new Chamber. I am delighted. It is an honour to be here.