Shane McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Varadkar for acknowledging in this Bill the plight of farmers. It is high time that the farming and food processing industry were treated the same as other sectors. Agribusiness employs 200,000 people but over the past 12 months, farmers have gone to the wall on a daily basis. In the parish of my wife's family, the number of dairy farmers have decreased from 40 to three over the past 20 years. I was shocked to learn over the past three weeks how bad circumstances have become for farmers. I visited a farmer with whom I am acquainted through our mutual involvement in an organisation and who paid six employees out of a milk cheque that was one third less this April than last year. We have developed the American way of farming due to high energy costs and poor cashflow. Farmers are culling the lower ends of their herds to generate the cash they need to continue.

Members on this side of the House are sometimes accused of being dramatic but everything that Deputy Bruton predicted 12 months ago has come to pass. Last November, when I met a correspondent to outline what I thought would happen in January and February he told me I was too dour. However, I was vindicated by events. If we go on holidays for two months, further problems will arise in September or October. It is unacceptable to reject a Bill such as the one before us. Two weeks' holidays this summer are enough for this House. We need to keep our eyes on the ball because when the middle of July comes we will be treated with contempt by the people, and rightly so. We cannot walk away because this is the House in which work can be done and people helped. To walk away in the first week of July and not return until the end of September is a disgrace. We will be forced to return in September because mortgage holders and business people will not survive until then. Their credit cards are full and their savings are gone. My county's club championships will be decimated because our young people are flying to Boston and all over the world in the hope of finding work. If we close in July and ignore our legislative responsibilities, we will deserve what we get in September.

We have looked after the people who control the banks while failing an industry. At the count centre in Trim, I saw milk from another country being put in our tea. That was a disgrace and an insult to the industry. Where are the boards that are supposed to sell our products?

We should sit every day this summer except for two weeks in August because we will be forced to return in September. Our small industries, and our farmers in particular, are the life and soul of the country. I ask the journalists in this House to visit the farms in counties Meath and Cork from which good cows are being sent to the factory for slaughter so that farmers can pay the ESB bills that the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources said would be reduced.

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