Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to comment on this legislation. In his speech, the Minister of State said: "The Bill relates to the implementation of routine Community directives and day to day regulations into Irish law through secondary legislation". That is what worries me most about this Bill. As one who was deeply involved in the referendum campaign on EU membership, I want to state clearly that I was, still am and always will be truly committed to the European idea. However, I cannot and will not accept some of the things I have seen happening in recent years, including the way individuals have been treated through over-regulation by Irish laws which are often blamed on Brussels. Members will be aware that as chairman of a European committee on beef and veal for a number of years, I dealt with Commission officials at the highest level. In that context, I know what I am talking about. It is extremely difficult to understand how and why we have implemented some of those regulations.

I remember sitting here with Alan Dukes during the debates on regulations to deal with the foot and mouth crisis. We, the then Labour spokesman and others got a commitment from the then Minister, Deputy Walsh, that while the regulations he had to introduce were essential, and he wanted our support for them, he would bring them to the House 12 months later to have them discussed again. That 12 months has long passed. Although we asked for them to be discussed several times, it has never happened. Once legislation such as this Bill is passed, it is ultimate and is the means used to deal with these issues.

I find it hard to understand how the Bill can be retrospective. While the Government has obviously taken legal advice, when we sought retrospective legislation in other areas, such as health, we were advised it was not possible and could not be considered. Will the Minister of State explain the legal basis for this aspect of the Bill?

The Bill is necessary in some form due to the background outlined by the Minister of State with regard to legal actions taken by a number of different groups. While we fully understand the need for it, its provisions are frightening, in particular the total ministerial power for which it provides. It is suggested it would clog up the work of the House if we had to reconsider regulations in the House on a regular basis but in fact the House is totally under-utilised. While the committee rooms might be effective — in some ways they are the most effective area of the Houses — they do not get any recognition or media coverage. In that context, this Chamber should sit on a much more regular basis, which would provide the opportunity to discuss regulations and not simply have them approved by ministerial order, which is dangerous.

Some issues raised by Deputies Connaughton and Naughten cannot be over-emphasised. No group has benefited more from our entry to the European Union than farmers. This is beyond question and there are major benefits yet to come from Europe. However, farmers are also subject to a litany of red tape and bureaucracy. When I visit other European countries with fellow Oireachtas Members to see the type of farming that happens there and how these countries compete with us, I am extremely anxious for the future. That is why the implications of the Bill are so important.

I was concerned by an on-farm inspection at the farm of one of my closest friends. His wife's brother had died suddenly on the morning of the inspection but that was no excuse. He did not have much education so his wife had to deal with the book-keeping on the farm. She had to abandon her brother's relatives and remain on the farm during the inspection. That is a long way from the Christian Ireland in which I and the Minister of State were brought up. There should be some degree of common sense and an understanding of how problems like that should be handled.

In another example, the mother of four children, who was expecting twins, had her farm inspected. Although the man in charge of the farm had died a few weeks earlier and she had not appointed a replacement, the inspection took place regardless. As all the sheep could not be found on the hills of west Cavan that day, she has never been paid. It was literally an army that was brought in to carry out that inspection. Such an approach cannot continue if we are to retain any level of progressive farming.

With regard to the food industry, in the past an abattoir was attached to most butchers' shops in towns and villages but that is no longer the case because regulations were imposed far beyond the letter of the law. Despite this, the product today is no better, cleaner or more acceptable to the housewife than it was 25 or 30 years ago, when high quality butchers were using their own animals, slaughtered in their own yards, for the use of the people. However, the laws are not being imposed to the same degree in other European countries. The then Minister, Deputy Walsh, promised five years ago that this matter would be dealt with, but nothing has happened. All we have is a further decline in these activities.

Can we not have a common sense approach to the issue of red tape? We have forced most of our farmers into part-time farming because of the income crisis. As another Deputy noted, when a farmer comes home from work to find an inspector has been on the farm all day and will be there the following morning, it is not easy for him to organise time off work to ensure he can look after his rights and entitlements.

I met the father of a farmer in Cavan late last year. When I visited that farm soon afterwards, I found the farmer had been the subject of eight inspections last year despite the farm being a single unit. The farmer had to take time off to go through all sorts of bureaucracy and red tape. During one inspection, the inspectors had to telephone headquarters a number of times to get explanations of what they were looking for because the forms were so detailed. This sort of bureaucracy must be addressed.

I visited Scotland recently with colleagues from the Minister of State's party. We were told in no uncertain terms that the Scots did not have to deal with the nitrates directive or red tape in the way we must. The previous speaker dealt with the situation in Germany. If the situation which applies in other countries applied here, we would not have a problem supporting the Bill.

A farmer may have given his life to build up a farm but because somebody arrives on the farm one day and has a problem with how the unit is run, he can lose all his income for that year — as the Minister of State knows, the single payment in many cases is 80% to 100% of his profit. It is different for somebody who robs or does damage to property. If such a person goes to court, as happened recently in my area, he or she can get off on a technicality if the Book of Evidence has not been fully processed, for example, and walk free. If there is one technicality at farm level, whether a lost tag or a box not filled in properly by an uneducated farmer, he or she is likely to lose the entire payment. These are issues the Government, or whatever Government replaces it this summer, must deal with immediately.

The frustration at farm and food industry level is unbelievable. The fear and dread are unbelievable. Farmers are getting out of the business. People of the calibre of John Boylan and many others are getting out of the business as a result of frustration. It is not the smallest farmers nor the least educated, but the best who are getting fed up with all the red tape.

It is legal for a farmer to spread slurry today, but slurry spreading is done by the calendar, not by following common sense. We have allowed ourselves to be forced down on such issues, supposedly by Brussels. As far as the nitrates directive is concerned, it was not Brussels which forced us, but the enactment of the legislation. We have got the worst deal imaginable as a result. Farmers must take their slurry miles in January to get it into somebody else's tank. Farmers have had no choice about when to spread their slurry, yet yesterday gardaí were out on the roads warning farmers to be careful about bringing slurry onto the roads on their tractor wheels and causing problems for road users. This is the sort of farming to which we are reduced. These types of regulations worry us. We look at the nitrates directive as something that just concerns nitrates, but its introduction means farmers cannot use phosphates either. Until recently, many farmers were not aware of this.

Farm organisations are extremely worried about the Bill as it stands. I understand it is necessary to deal with legal issues, but Fine Gael will bring forward amendments to try and make it acceptable and to ensure the House has some role to play in what the European Union hands down to us. It is vital that industry, whether farming or any other sector, is not tied by ministerial order in red tape without the issues having been thought through. I, more than most, am committed to Europe and have seen how it works here and elsewhere. We in Ireland are good Europeans to the extreme in our observation of the regulations.

Some years ago as a member of the Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food I visited Chicago where we saw the large market where agricultural produce is sold. We also saw a beef, dairy and poultry farm run by three brothers some distance outside the city. The beef was produced with the use of hormones, the milk with steroids and they used anything they could to improve the growth of the chickens so as to get their produce to market as early and as cheaply as possible. When I asked the Taoiseach if these practices were allowable under WHO rules, he said they were. They are different rules than we have here and the quality of the product is different, yet we must compete with such practices.

When we see industries like Motorola and many others are going to the wall, we realise the importance of indigenous industry and farming for the nation. We cannot ignore the fact that people have a right to this industry. We can produce at farm and factory level as well if not better than anywhere else provided we are not impeded by rules and fines that come through a Bill such as this which is completely unacceptable.

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