Mr. John Daly:

We have been involved in growing grain all of our lives, from as far back as I can remember. I remember cutting corn in 1985. We used to cut wheat at night and barley during the day. At that time, we had only half the combine power we have now. In 1985, along with the contractors, we managed to cut every acre of corn that was to be cut. This year, we did not. I have never ever seen crops in the state they were this year over such a vast area. I uploaded photographs onto the iPad today to show the committee how bad it was. I have never seen it before. My father said that he had never in his life experienced a situation whereby we did not get the corn cut. However, this year, we did not.

We welcome the low-interest loans, but they are not the solution to our problem. We need a cash injection to pay the bills. Merchants are ringing looking for their payment for their input for the year. The basic payment for the single farm is gone but the bills still are not paid. Bills remain outstanding. There is another chunk of the single payment hopefully coming this week, but there will still be substantial bills outstanding after this year. This year comes after three average harvests. There was no reserve coming into this year. Now here we are, with the weather crisis having inflicted losses of between 30% and 100%. We cut farms of sizes ranging from 10 acres to 400 acres and there was not one that did not experience losses.

That is just in grain. There were 50% losses in straw alone in our area. There is high demand for straw in our area because, while there are not that many tillage farmers, the dairy and beef farmers constantly need straw. They are frustrated that we were unable to supply it.

As far back as the ploughing championships, we met the Minister, Deputy Creed, who told us that we would have to go to Europe. About three weeks ago, an IFA delegation went to Brussels where we met Mr. Tom Tynan. His exact words were: "Stay knocking on Kildare Street until you get it." He said that at the time there was no traction in Europe unless the French got on board. When the French got on board time had rolled on, however, so they do not have as much support in the European Parliament now as they would have had at the time of the harvest. Therefore, their support is being watered down.

We met with Deputies McConalogue and Cahill earlier and I must commend them for the way they targeted the Minister, Deputy Creed, for the necessary crisis funding. I was in the Visitors Gallery and they really did give it their all. Unless we receive support from every politician to get this over the line, the tillage industry will be on a slippery slope, especially in the western corridor from Cork to Donegal. It cannot be sustained so we need a cash injection to get us out of this hole.