Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegation, which has a serious job to do.

The way we operate European Union regulations is way above and beyond anything else in Europe. It is unreal. I do not know who is pushing it but the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is unreal. It checks and measures every section of the land. My son has a farm which has an area beside a river which had to be cut off. The Department is trying to exclude that. It is outrageous what is going on. Farmers are being harassed. They are having problems with prices and they are being over-supervised. We have more inspections in a single year. We have organic inspections, Bord Bia inspections and inspections regarding grass.

My son, who is a young farmer, was inspected and they spent days going through the whole thing. All I am saying is that they should lay off, because farmers are being driven absolutely mad. Fortunately my son and my wife run the farm and they are well qualified to provide all the information in respect of tags, tests and all those requirements. Farmers are under enormous pressure whether it is coming from the European Union or Kildare Street. From my general experience when I was Minister of State with responsibility for trade and marketing, adherence to the regulations here is way beyond any other country. I would say the same in respect of sanitary facilities. We have a pub and we had to put in disabled toilets, we naturally had to put in women's and gents' toilets, plenty of them. In restaurants and bars in Barcelona or Paris disabled people cannot get down to the basement where the toilets are and there are no lifts. They are just not adhering to the regulations as we are. We must be the most adherent country of the 27 member states, or 28 as it is now. I do not know if it is coming from the witnesses' office in Luxembourg or where but farmers are under enormous pressure at the moment. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine should lay off, for God's sake.