Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

That is really quite a staggering amount of money, and shows the importance of this sector to the State and our citizens. However, there is a big contradiction between an industry of this scale - we are the biggest exporter of beef, lamb and dairy in the whole of Europe, the biggest exporter of powdered infant formula and the UK's largest supplier of food - and farmers' incomes. It is a really gargantuan industry, with a lot of money coming in from the European Union, but there is an enormous contradiction in that 40% of farmers earn less than €10,000 per year directly from farming. Against this background of an enormous industry with exports worth billions, huge numbers of farmers are struggling, and struggling badly. They are facing very significant threats coming down the tracks, particularly in the form of TTIP. Some of us have been talking about this for some time, but recent leaks have clearly exposed the enormous threat posed by TTIP for many sectors, and most particularly for farmers and the agrifood sector.

Having listened to the previous contributors - this connects with the concerns about TTIP - I believe there is a dominance of the industry by the big agrifood processors and the big multinational and retail chains. Their domination of the whole sector and their effective control of pricing is putting small farmers in an extremely precarious position. Added to that are our old friends the banks. In both cases the Government really does not want to exercise any serious control.

It may meet these people but it shows no willingness to interfere with the market. It shows no willingness to exercise control over these banks or clip the wings of the big agrifood processors and retail chains which just want to squeeze the farmers as much as they can to ensure their profitability, thereby threatening the livelihoods of thousands of small farmers and, ultimately, connected to that, the future of small towns and villages in rural Ireland. All that is further compounded by the closure of post offices, small schools and Garda stations. One can go on through the list.

It is a huge industry but there are enormous contradictions-----

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