Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I note that the Minister thanked Deputy Ó Cuív for putting forward his motion and then began to tear it asunder. There is no doubt that beef farmers and sheep farmers, when we had the ridiculous proposals on commonage, vegetable growers and many groups of farmers are suffering.

Some may think that agriculture is important only to farmers, the initial food producers. That is not the case. Over the past few years, when the failures of neoliberal economics caused such massive economic damage to this nation, the only functioning part of Ireland's indigenous economy was agriculture, and to a lesser extent the tourism industry. This benefitted every man, woman and child in the State, not just people in rural areas, during the darkest of those dark days. Despite the trumpets our economic spring or summer has not yet arrived.

Agriculture, farmers and rural areas are once more at great risk because of Government failure to ensure a fair and balanced framework where beef farmers, processors, shops and shoppers can each get a fair deal. It is all a question of fairness. The framework is so heavily loaded against producers in favour of processors and multinational supermarkets that there is a strong case to be made for an examination by the Competition Authority or maybe even by the fraud squad. If that needs to be done at European level, let it be done because it is patently and obviously price fixing at its worst. That is what is happening, changing specifications in order to control the volume, in order to keep the price low for the processors taking in the cattle. It is scandalous and is bringing small farmers to their knees. Some of them see no future.

The Minister also said that the Fianna Fáil motion did not come up with any proposals to build upon food harvest 2020. I will come up with one, as a spokesman on communications, energy and natural resources: biomass. For an agricultural nation we produce a relatively small amount of biomass. An increase in our output would not only help diversify our agricultural sector, it would also help us reach our renewable energy targets.

Biomass is a widespread resource and can be divided into waste produce and purpose grown material. Waste produce can come from agriculture, forestry, households and sewage. Purpose grown material consists of crops which can be grown quickly for the purpose of creating biomass. Ireland has a strong agricultural sector but its contribution to renewable energy production from biomass and waste has been well below the EU average. The recent partial merger of Bord na Móna and Coillte should aid in the development of Irish biomass production.

A report carried out by BW Energy into alternatives to relying on wind energy to reach renewable energy targets found that the existing power station at Moneypoint, County Clare could provide a solution to Ireland's energy needs if we were to use biomass. Moneypoint, the largest fossil fuel power generation in Ireland currently supplies around 25% of Irish power generation demand. It plays a key strategic role in the Irish power system with associated implications for how the 2020 renewable power generation target is met.

Biomass boiler technologies and the international biomass market are well established. Both biomass co-firing and full conversion are proven as technically viable and economically attractive for large coal fixed power stations such as Moneypoint. Following the scaling up of the international biomass market and technical advances in boiler design, co-firing with biomass, or conversion to biomass generation at the key Moneypoint coal station, should now be evaluated as a real option to meet the 2020 target.

Unless the threat to agriculture is taken seriously, we will all be poorer. We need fairness first, particularly in the beef and vegetable trade, and we need to take seriously the other options available, particularly in respect of biomass.

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