Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

In the limited time available to me I wish to deal with three issues - farming, jobs and cross-Border trade. After his first budget last year, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, admitted his decision to raise VAT at the same time as the UK Chancellor decreased his rate meant a loss of €700 million in revenue to our State. Even though he brought in a second budget, he made no effort to rectify this situation. It is important that he advises us what this loss has come to in a full year. I understand 50% of the alcohol sold on the island of Ireland is now being sold in the six Northern counties.

Jobs are being lost in retail and other sectors as a direct result of this haemorrhage of business. The Minister can no longer ignore the issue. A reduction in VAT would certainly help our tourist and other high employment sectors and must be introduced. We can never tax ourselves out of the current crisis but the Government clearly has no commitment to bringing in structures which would help create employment, minimise the dole queue and, in turn, improve our tax income.

Agriculture is still the main industry in my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan but the Government has done everything to undermine the structures. It has cut REPS, installation and EU aid. Even the dairy industry which used to give the single best income on family farms is in crisis. Beef and sheep farmers are losing money and pig farmers are in serious crisis. We are advised that many pigs will die this Christmas if funds are not made available. Many farmers are failing to get necessary support from either their banking institutions or the Department of Social and Family Affairs. In all my years of involvement in the industry, I have never seen such fear among farm families. Like many mortgage holders, they cannot understand that a Government could find so many billions of euro to prop up the banking structures without having received any commitments in return to support small industry, mortgage holders and agriculture.

We appreciate, and most parties have agreed, that it is necessary for EU reasons and common sense to make savings of €4 billion, but it is vital that whatever cuts are made are fair and reasonable and do not cause further deterioration in the potential of agriculture and job creation in general. Only jobs can bring us out of this crisis. Taxation will not.

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