Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the IFA and the ICMSA here to the meeting today.

A lot has been said here today about the situation. In relation to farming any way and the dairy sector, the goalposts are changing almost every day of the week and no dairy farmer can plan. That is what they tell me anyhow; I am more on the suckler side of it. I meet dairy farmers every day of the week. I worked with them down through the years. If the goalposts change every day of the week and if the European legislation and local government legislation keeps changing, that means the farmer must change to meet those needs.

During all this derogation debacle, which is the best way I can describe it, every politician in the country was running down to Timoleague. I felt it was making a fool of the farmers below there because they thought they had some hope because they had done what needed to be done in relation to Irish agriculture and it meant nothing. This is European legislation and we are in Europe. It looks like the French and the Germans have now woken up and there may be changes coming.

I plead with the IFA, as an organisation. God knows, I am a member of the IFA. I am not in the ICMSA - I am sorry about that - because I do not milk cows. I did at one time, with my bare hands, but that time has changed. I fight hard for farmers and that fight is not going on in Europe today. It is not going on by our own politicians in Europe and I felt that our leaders did not do us any justice in this. While they may say it was European legislation, they were finger-pointing, fighting locally and trying to get it so that if this is to happen, it will get across the line but if they make a bit of a fuss and a fooster, it might sound good. It is not good enough.

Farmers' livelihoods are under severe pressure. I speak to them every day of the week. Last Christmas 12 months, a farmer rang me. He was investing in a robot milking parlour. Our guests will be aware that many farmers have invested quite a lot in recent times and there has been the VAT crisis. You name it, everything will be thrown at them just to make sure that a farmer cannot grow or a young person who wants to come on and make changes is not allowed make changes. The farmer said to me last Christmas 12 months that he was thinking of buying a robot parlour set-up. He had one already. One would say he is a substantial farmer to do that but he had invested quite a lot. He asked me for my advice. I would hate to stop anyone from investing but I told him what was coming down the road. He said to me that there have got to be changes in this because the political system led him to believe that there would be changes. I said, "Maybe I am wrong and if I am, I will put my two hands up in the air.", but I was not wrong. He was a lucky man. He contacted me afterwards to say he did not invest. It is terribly sad to think that I could not advise him and say, "Come on, grow." There is a big family of them there. He has youngsters coming their way, but I could not if I wanted to tell him the truth. I could have told him a fib. I felt that a lot of farmers were being told fibs and that there was not enough action taken by this Government to try to swing the hand of the European legislators. As I said, others might do that.

Has the IFA any confidence, if we have the same set-up going forward, that we will not go from 220 kg N/ha to 170 kg N/ha? Have they confidence in this Government that it will fight for them to make sure that that will not happen? That is what it is down to. "Enough is Enough", is the IFA's slogan. I fully agree with. Enough is enough but we have no backbone in this country to fight for the farmer. Whether it be a dairy or a suckler man, there is no backbone.

The Greens today are wagging the tail of Irish Government. God knows, you have got to praise them. They are doing a hell of a bloody-good job. What if Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and them will not wake up and start backing the hard-working Irish farmer who produces pristine green good-quality land and good-quality products and stop looking at what we are bringing in from abroad, which is all we are doing? We have this habit to block everything to come into this country but make sure we bring it in the backdoor from some other country, such as the Brazilian beef. I could go on forever.

I would ask Mr. Gorman that question. Has the IFA confidence with the current structure we have that they will fight to make sure we will not go from 220 kg N/ha to 170 kg N/ha and we do not have people going around another year or two fooling farmers in Timoleague and all over the place and going nowhere? Can Mr. Gorman answer me that question?