Mr. Tim Cullinan:

I thank Deputy Browne for his question on Mercosur. I have been very close to this in my position as vice president of the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations, COPA. The position is that the Mercosur process has been slowed down because it has to go through the political system. The view politically is that it is not going ahead at the moment. If it was to go ahead, it would be very concerning, especially if we couple that with what is happening in the UK, which will, more than likely, do a trade deal with Australia. If that were to happen, it would be even more critical that we do not have an EU-Mercosur deal. I return to CAP, the green deal and the farm-to-fork strategy.

There is no way that we can allow the EU to import beef from a country that will not have the same environmental standards that we will have in Europe going forward. From that point of view, that trade deal cannot happen. We speak about inflation. We all know the prices that farmers receive today are similar to those they received 30 years ago. A lot of this has been the pressure coming from discounters. Deputy Martin Browne may have seen recently that we took up this issue with one of the international retailers. It tried to silence us by seeking a court injunction against us. We were able to prove that we want to fight on for farmers. We proved last Friday that it was not able to obtain that injunction against us. That is very important in the battle of the price of food going forward.

To sum up, I am delighted that we had an excellent discussion today and a debate with all the farm organisations. One message is coming out here and Deputy Carthy alluded to it, which is the problem is there is not enough money in the pot. We are scrambling for an increasingly lower budget and there is no point in saying anything else; it is very divisive. We must ensure the funding is distributed in the fairest way possible, which is not easy. We must look at alternative ways of getting funding and the Government has a duty to ensure we get the maximum funding from the pillar and from national co-financing and that the €1.5 billion is ring-fenced. Tomorrow, we are going out to highlight all of that. We want to do two things. The impact all of this can have on rural towns and villages of Ireland is highly concerning. Approximately 300,000 people are employed in our sector in rural Ireland. That is a massive number of people. If one takes in the rural economy, that is approximately 11% of employment overall. Local towns and villages are only reopening after Covid-19. The last thing we want to see is a long-term impact on agriculture that will affect the viability both of us as farmers and of all the businesses in rural towns up and down the country from Donegal right down to west Cork. The reason we will be getting out there on Friday is to explain this to people on the ground, as well as for our members to send a clear message to the Government and to the Minister that he needs to conclude the talks in Brussels and get a proper redistribution of this funding in a fair and equitable way for all farmers, as well as ensuring that the viability of farmers can be sustained. While people here have stated that only a cohort of farmers is viable, what we are trying to do - it is difficult - is to get from 30% and to have a lot more farmers viable into the future. That is what we are about.