Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is very interesting to listen to all the witnesses individually. I welcome their input.

I live on a farm and all my neighbours are farmers. I am deeply concerned about farming in Ireland, especially for small farmers. My neighbours are worried about it. It is not as though it was going great guns anyway and now we have the whole mess-up with climate change and the ridiculously unpredictable nature of farming now. We used to have patterns and now they are gone. Farming was based on having patterns that were fairly reliable. My neighbour came to get fodder from us recently because he did not have enough. One of my biggest concerns as a politician and someone who lives in rural Ireland is what the hell we will do about farming.

On our family farm, my sister diversified and she has goats. Now she has ten full-time jobs on a 60 acre farm. She makes goat's cheese. I have another neighbour who has 50 cows. He has three machines and we all go to buy the milk directly off bottles.

He is doing well. Nobody is making loads of money, but they are all surviving. They are not thriving, necessarily, but they are feeling good about themselves because they are using land in a way that is providing for their families. That is something that is really important for farmers. Every farmer would love not to need any payments and to be completely self-sufficient, as would any small business owner. Small business owners want to be able to stand on their own two feet.

It is important that Irish people value the quality of milk and meat we get and understand how lucky we are when we buy Irish milk and meat. We need to appreciate more that quality compared with anywhere else in the world before we reach for Brazilian beef or English milk. We need to do work on getting Irish people to realise the importance of supporting buying Irish milk and meat. There is a PR piece missing there because origin green is kind of vague. The customer has so much power to support our small farmers and dairy industry.

I completely agree on the PRSI credit issue, and not just for farmers. I am my party's spokesperson for enterprise, trade and employment and also rural development. I am meeting the Minister, Deputy Burke, about small businesses needing more supports. We do not have a nuanced discussion when it comes to farming. I see a huge difference between 1,000 head of cattle in a shed all year round making a load of money for a farmer and all my neighbours who have between 30 and 50 cattle. If we do not start differentiating farming supports, we will not serve our smaller farmers properly. That is why I am a bit wary of the means test. We need some means testing. We cannot have a position where large farmers on huge profits are not means tested and get loads of grants they do not need when small farmers need more of that money. There has to be a nuanced discussion around farming in Ireland. It is being dealt with too generically.

People say it is all farmers this and all farmers that. They say that all farmers are polluting our waters, they are all really poor or really rich or they all care about nature. We need to differentiate because there are no big farmers where I come from. We do not have the big sheds that farmers have in County Meath where they are making money hand over fist.

We also have a huge issue with butchering and offal management. We have not mentioned the complete monopoly in that area, which is affecting every farmer, small and big. The means test is important and it is good the witnesses are her to talk about it. However, putting in money or looking at money-only solutions to farming will not solve the problems in farming. Farming is under serious threat and it has to change. There is no choice in the matter. This was foreseen by me 20 or 30 years ago when I had Professor John Sweeney down to talk to a big crowd of farmers in Ennis. He told them then exactly what is happening now. The climate issue has led us to this point. That is why we have to be careful about being submissive about the eco-payments. In some ways, we have to get Europe to give us more money for those measures. The more money we can get for those, the more that farmers can do what they want to do, namely, be custodians of the land and be financially viable.

The current model, which is all about outputs, inputs and production, as the witnesses said, has left family farms struggling. That is why they are here talking about means tests. The current model has not suited the small family farm. I remember ICI protestsback in the 1980s.Farmers were told to get a fertiliser with a 10-10-20 mix, spread as much as they could and spend all their money on nitrates. Last year, at the ploughing championships, farmers told me they could not afford any nitrates but they managed their slurry better, reduced their costs and got the same yield. We need a bigger debate than just throwing more money at farming and getting means tests and PRSI. We all need to get together to look at solutions and I have seen many good solutions. The Korean method is an amazing method which is low-cost and effective. Great farmers in County Kerry are looking at microbes to increase the topsoil because if the topsoil is improved, fewer nitrates are needed and water quality improves. The use of mixed swards instead of just growing clover means we can hold on to soil because now, with the change in rainfall, we are losing soil, which is causing the level of the rivers to rise.