Mr. Nigel Renaghan:

Mention was made of the farmers in 2018. I concur with my colleague from Donegal because I was one of those farmers. I was one of the 63 who stuck with it even though I never got in. I have a modified building, a six-bay cattle shed. I was required to have a 60% lie-back area. All these things needed to be done at enormous cost. In addition to doing a course, I had to pay certification bodies. Sheds needed to be modified. It was horrendous. A farmer who is in conversion is not allowed to use ordinary meal and must buy organic meal. There are now only 63 of those farmers who never got in. An injustice was done to those farmers and I am one of them.

That needs to be rectified. We talk about getting people into organic farming. Most countries in Europe have public procurement for organics. The Government has a huge role to play in this area of public procurement.

There is huge potential for organic lamb. While there is not much demand for it from factories in Ireland, there is demand for it on the Continent. We are not in that space, however. The word missing from all of this is "seasonal". Let us take a farmer on Arranmore Island who is doing a joint venture with other farmers on the mainland. If they are to do organic lamb right, it needs to be seasonal and promoted as a seasonal product because that is what it is.

If we are to move organic farming on, we must have a payment. As has been said with regard to the payments, 25% of the money is accounted for by leakage to certification bodies, people doing up plans and so on. For us to drive this on, we need €520 for conversion and payment of €470 after two years. That may seem like a lot but bear in mind that under GLAS, a payment of €900 per hectare is available for wild bird cover. Let us compare like with like. We also need a 60% grant because the farmers are not in a position to use chemicals. Everything must be done manually and farmers need costly equipment to be able to do that. That must also be taken into consideration.

Reference was made to what we are doing and what we can do to promote organics. We held an organic producers day when we teamed up with Fáilte Ireland. We asked it if there would be any interest in funding. We did a joint venture with Fáilte Ireland. It was supposed to happen last year but Covid knocked that on the head and it was cancelled again this year. However, we had a day in Marlay Park for organic producers from across the country. We introduced them and it was a very successful day.

As Deputy Michael Collins said, it is important to note that anyone producing organic beef or other produce in a part of the country where there is no organic mart, that produce is lost to the system. That is a fundamental flaw. Better knowledge transfer is required. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine could provide a networking facility to enable organic producers to contact each other and sell or supply each other. Having more local abattoirs would also be of huge benefit. This would facilitate us farmers in being able to process.

Another area has not yet been touched on today. When we talk of what we can and cannot do in organic farming in Ireland, we must look at what is being imported. There is no point in Bord Bia talking about all this organic produce in Ireland because a lot it is not worth passing remarks on. We not going to start producing nuts in Ireland. It is just not going to happen. We have to see what we can produce and where we can produce it. We can produce organic beef and seasonal lamb. Flahavan's imports more than 3,000 tonnes of organic oats every year. We should be able to fit into that area and marry up with it. Even in my local area people are starting up mills to make flour. There is the tradition that says one can only make flour way down the country and that we cannot produce it here in the northern part of the country. There are, however, lots of parts of the country that can produce flour on a small scale, be it oats for eating or flour for bread making. It can be done and is being done. Farmers like us are not being incentivised and are not getting financial supports to be able to do that. Whether one likes it or not, most organic farmers are small farmers. We need supports to be able to do that, either at a co-operative level or at local level.