Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to a debate I believe is the most serious debate we have had in this House this year and last year. Since June 2012, my part of the country has been battered. Within one month of the beginning of the crisis in June, I raised the issue during Leaders' Questions on 12 July, but it was almost dismissed out of hand. Unfortunately, not only did the weather not improve; it got worse right through the summer. In August 2012, I asked that inspections not be carried out under the same harsh regime as normal, but in October and November 2012, Department officials went into land that had not been fit to travel on since May 2012 and penalised farmers to the extent of 100% of their premiums, REPS payments, single farm payments and disadvantaged payments because no rushes had been cut on that land. The only way a farmer could travel on land in western Duhallow from July 2012 until now was by helicopter. One farmer in western Duhallow baled silage in the last week of June of 2012 and he brought it out during the dry second half of March this year. He got the bales out of the field and into the yard, but not to the cattle.

We had the coldest March on record although we had been banking on good weather in March. Some Government backbenchers said last night that Fianna Fáil would be hoping the crisis would continue. I am a practising farmer myself and I guarantee that when I left out my cattle for the first time on Monday, I sincerely hoped they would not have to return to the sheds this year. Having listened to farmers in my locality over the past six months, I know they have been persecuted with the weather and that they feel they are being left almost on their own. Every sector and every farmer was hoping for an early spring, but it was quite clear from 10 or 11 March that we were in trouble.

On 28 March, I raised the matter here in the Dáil on Leaders' Questions and it was dismissed.

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