William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. Earlier a group was before the committee pleading with us for ring-fenced money for five years for the tillage sector. They were looking for that in advance of the budget and they were here because they are in a very serious situation. I do not think the witnesses have answered the question given that they say the area will be increased to 400,000 ha but I guarantee we will be sitting here in five years' time and the sector will have dropped below what we have today. I guarantee it. I do not know anybody who is going into tillage. I know people who are exiting tillage and it is very wrong that they are doing so. I am around long enough to remember when people could make a living with 30, 40 or 50 cows. The number required has doubled, trebled and quadrupled. Tillage is the same. That is why small people are being taken out of tillage. What do we call a small person? There is absolutely no way someone could make an income with 100 acres of tillage, not a notion of it. Those with an average-sized farm have to come out of it because that is no longer viable.

The Department is saying all of the schemes already support the sector. If this has happened, why are so many people walking away? Why have so many people in this country who were very good tillage farmers gone into milking cows? They have changed their farms to milk cows. Why is this? It is because of profit level that is there as well as the projected incomes over the next ten years. Even if the price per litre drops by A, B, C or D, they will still be in a profitable situation. I cannot understand it. I was never a grain grower but I could never understand how barley would be cut and sent to the malt house but the farmers would not get the price of it for six or eight weeks. Would we ask dairy farmers to produce milk, not know what they will get for it when it is being taken away in the lorry, and be told two months later what they get for it? This is crazy stuff.

When did the Department last meet on Food Vision? That is a direct question and I would like an answer.