Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 6 December 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Effect of Bad Weather on Grain Harvest: Irish Farmers Association

4:20 pm

Photo of Pat DeeringPat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I thank the IFA, Mr. Healy and his delegation, for attending the meeting and highlighting the issue. As can be seen, there is consensus. What we need to do as a committee is issue a report in the next couple of days. I hope the delegation members can feed into it any information they have from the survey as soon as they have it because that is very important. There are different figures, for example, Deputy Brassil saying there are 400 in his parish, so we need to get final figures to see where we are going. We will issue a report to the Minister.

There has to be a European element to this as well because that is very important. We will copy the report to the Commission. There may be a need for a committee delegation to Brussels. I know the witnesses are going there tomorrow and it is important they keep banging away on that drum, irrespective of what others may have said in recent weeks. The drum needs to be banged, so to speak, over there as well as here and both feed into the one, as it were. I thank the delegation for attending the meeting today.