Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is a most important debate in the Chamber today. I am aware some Members are involved with committees and cannot attend the debate, but while the attendance is pretty good on this side of the House, I would have expected a better representation from all sides.

Agriculture is still the backbone of the Irish economy and the number of urgent issues the industry faces is overwhelming. In the time available I will try to outline some of the most pressing issues that have been highlighted by my constituents.

I wish to focus on flooding in my constituency of Roscommon-Galway. It is six months on and people are still isolated from their homes and farms. We may not see the floods here in Dublin but they are still in many areas, particularly in my constituency. In the areas where the water has receded, the problems of fodder shortage and land erosion are just two of the issues that the farmers face. One might think erosion only affects coastal areas, but it is also happening inland. We are seeing a crisis of the level experienced in 2013, and in some cases it is worse. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine is on the back foot and has no plan in place to address this major problem in rural Ireland. I received figures which show that only 311 of the 377 farmers who claimed under the fodder scheme through the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine have been paid to date. No funding is available for the reseeding of grassland devastated by the flood waters. Neither is funding available for land drainage, which is necessary on an ongoing basis in rural areas, particularly in the west and the midlands. I have visited local farms in my constituency and seen the damage at first hand. I have met with farmers who have had to sell their livestock at the mart because so much of their farmland was flooded. That is a terrible burden on a farmer who loves his land and his stock. None of the land in areas to which I refer is fit to graze, and it will not be fit to graze.

I believe 130 people have been paid under the emergency flood damage relief scheme. We must extend the flood relief package to include loss of grassland, crops and also loss of earnings due to the sale of stock at the wrong time. I have met farmers in County Roscommon whose livestock drowned. The names Castleplunket, Lisfelim, Knockcroghery, Dysart and Ballinamore in east Galway might not mean much to Members of this House, but people live there and small farmers are trying to survive, and their lives over the past six months have been sheer hell.

A land drainage scheme must be reintroduced immediately by the Government to ensure that drains that are choked and blocked can be dealt with before next winter. While I am pleased that the floods are receding, I am concerned that the debate on the damage and trouble caused by them is also receding. Before we know it next winter will be here and we will have serious flooding again. We must talk to farmers directly. We must talk to the people on the ground who know the cause of the flooding and the issues relevant to the area. With all due respect to officials or even politicians, talking about it without consulting the people is not the way to proceed. We cannot go into the winter of 2016 hoping that the flood waters will not come again.

The agriculture sector is a leading employer in this country, yet sometimes we treat it with disdain. We talk about it being the backbone of the economy. Many people from rural areas know how important agriculture is. It is a known fact that when farmers are not doing well then local villages and towns do not do well. The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Heather Humphreys, who is from Cavan-Monaghan, is present and she will know what I am speaking about in that regard because she is from a rural constituency.

Another complicating factor for the agriculture sector is the beef genomics programme. It is totally unworkable for the average farmer. I call on the Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to revisit the issue. We need to get rid of some of the red tape involved in the process and ensure that the system is simplified and streamlined in order that farmers are not left without a proper income. The inspections, in addition to complicated applications and the imposition of penalties, are causing farmers a lot of stress and worry. It appears that the red tape is put in place by the EU bureaucrats who have no idea about the working of farmland in Ireland.

A fair price for produce must be addressed also. There is no doubt that we have the best food produce in the world, yet due to the rising instability in the beef, dairy, tillage and sheep sectors, the Government must do much more to ensure that a stable income stream for farmers is guaranteed as well as a decent level of profitability.

I fully support the introduction of a national food ombudsman to ensure that the monopolisation of the industry is stopped. An ombudsman would protect the primary producers, act as a watchdog and ensure that a small number of processors could not dictate the price of cattle. As has been said time and again in recent years, that situation is causing a lot of damage to the agriculture sector. We constantly hear that the agrifood sector is the largest indigenous industry in this country. We hear about the significant employment, with approximately 180,000 people working in the industry, and the significant exports, worth approximately €11 billion in 2015, yet the prevailing view in many circles is that agriculture is not an important part of the economy. Overall, farm incomes were reduced by 9% in 2015. In many respects farmers do not have a decent weekly wage. That is a fact of life for those involved in agriculture in this country.

In conclusion, I wish to ask the Minister to do a few things. He must immediately dispatch a senior official from his Department to the CEO of Roscommon County Council. The Minister must ensure the flooded areas are visited with the council officials. He must also seriously consider the introduction of a land drainage scheme, because that is a major problem in the constituency. In addition, he must reopen the fodder scheme, because there is no doubt fodder is in short supply for some farmers. Money is also in short supply for them, and if we do not help those farmers they will be out of farming this time next year.

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