Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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When farmers entered into this fixed-price arrangement, to be fair to them and to everybody involved, nobody expected there was going to be a war and nobody expected that electricity prices, fuel prices and the prices of all the commodities farmers use would double and put them under this pressure. I have nothing against profit. One must have profit. People who are running companies and co-ops and farmers must have profit. However, this is a different time. The Government has stepped in and it needs to step in further with regard to fuel and other issues, but farmers who are producing milk now are not getting a fair price for their commodity. Everybody knows that the milk is being produced and everybody knows there is a problem. Somebody needs to do something about it. We saw this with regard to Ukraine when its own product could not be let into Europe and what that is going to do to with the food supply in Europe and the rest of the world.

The greedy people always want to screw everybody every chance they get. Farmers are in trouble. Only a small few are tied into the fixed prices. Why can the witnesses not do something for them and help them out on this occasion? I know they are in a fixed-price contract and we know it is legally binding, but this is not about legality. It is about fairness and about farmers having very serious difficulties. This is about farmers who will go to the wall. That is not good for the co-ops, it is not good for the country and it is not good for the consumer. Somebody is winning from this, and whoever is winning needs to put his hand up and do something now for these farmers. I am asking that something be done now. Let us not talk about it. Let us not have farmers having to leave and their sons and daughters not wanting to take up this industry in the future. We will be depending on them for good food and good milk. We will be depending on farmers in the future. If we do not have our own people doing it and our own commodity, we cannot depend on what is coming in from Europe or from outside Europe because there is such difficulty all over the world now.

Let us be fair. I know they entered into a fixed price. When they did, nobody foresaw what was coming down the line. We need to do something for them now, not when they have gone out of business and we are saying we are sorry we let them go out of business. We saw this in Tuam with the sugar factory. We saw what happened when farmers were not getting a fair price for their commodity. Eventually sugar was being brought in from Brazil. Now we do not know if we will ever have enough sugar. We will be depending on another country to provide a product that we could have provided in this country. We have good milk farmers. They work hard and give it everything. It is a hard life and it is time that everybody stepped up to the plate and did something for them.