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

I will move away from that but I have not told any lies.

Organic fertiliser was mentioned. I do not where the options are for that, all of a sudden, or how farmers can supplement. As it stands, many of them will not have fertiliser of any kind because they cannot afford it. Those who can may try to, for a short time. The big question I have is how long this price increase is going to last. The witness is here to tell us and I am here to take the message down the country to the people I am representing. The increase is savage. It is a double increase of 50% or more per product whether it is urea, pasture sward, nitrogen or whatever it is. The milk men will try for a while to deal with this problem and try to carry on because, like I said, they have so much put into it but then what is going to happen the beef fellows with suckler cows who are down on the poor land? They do not have much good ground and need to ensure they have fodder for the winter and that they have enough grass to drive on the cows. We were told to feed them on grass and believed we were doing better than other countries that were feeding their animals inside, in system units, all year round. I have seen them myself over in America.

In case anyone thinks this is just a farmer's problem, it is going to be a consumer problem. How is that going to be dealt with? We were told at the very start and all along that the farm-based payments farmers were getting were to make up for not being paid properly for their produce. What is going to happen now given consumers will not be able to buy the food they were used to buying because the price of it is going to go up? Do people think the farmers are going to get up every morning to milk cows and give up half their night when cows are calving only to have nothing left? As was rightly stated by the Chairman, many of these are on fixed-price contracts. Given the position we are in, we should be asking the Government to ensure none of these contracts can stand because this was totally unforeseen. That is the other question. The witness may be saying that we are over-producing but who is going to step into the breach? Is it Brazil or Argentina? I did not hear that there was any food or produce being dumped anywhere. It was all being used. Are we going to leave people hungry somewhere? Is that going to happen? I believe there are already over 700 million people going hungry.