Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman. I note it did not take long for him to make it to the top job on the centre chair. He is doing a fantastic job.

I am glad to contribute to this debate, being from the north west, an area dependent on agriculture for its survival. We have smaller holdings, longer winters and worse land. We need more attention than most if we are to survive and continue to contribute to the output of this country. In agrifood, the beef sector is the most important. The north west is the engine room for beef production, where some 40% of the nation's weanlings are produced. To do that, we need to have targeted supports to ensure people are not dependent on having a wife working in a bank or as a doctor, or having a husband working somewhere else to supplement the farm income to keep food production going, keep people on the land and preserve what, after all, is the tradition that helped build this nation and its many positive attributes. In that regard, there are a number of steps that need to be taken.

While I do not doubt the individual commitment of any Minister in supporting agriculture and family farming, if we are to be successful and ensure people stay on the land, we need to be much more innovative in how we approach this area. We have heard from many colleagues across the House about the unworkability of many agricultural schemes introduced over the years, such as GLAS and the beef genomics scheme, as well as the bureaucracy, the administration involved, and the time and money these cost farmers. It often seems the focus is much more on compliance than facilitation or the application of common sense to target necessary supports to assist production, family farming and the tradition we have in this country of supporting the rural economy.

When the mid-term CAP review comes up, we would like to see any unspent moneys in the rural development programme channelled specifically into the areas of natural constraint scheme. However, again, the application of the scheme penalises people for having bad land, as opposed to supporting them with the difficulties they have and acknowledging they have constraints because their land is not so good, has rushy areas, vulnerable waters and so on. It would be a good day's work if, through the application of common sense and fair compliance measures, we improved these schemes so that farmers, as the custodians of our rural environment, could best go about their business in food production and continue to do what made this country famous through its annual exports of food products worth some €11 billion.

One issue close to my heart is our over-focus on compliance. That is not to say I advocate non-compliance. It is important we have workable and manageable rules and regulations. However, we must focus equally on market access. We have been bad at that. Paddy Rogan, a former chief veterinary officer in the agriculture Department, had a reputation for getting doors opened internationally for Irish produce. While we have been good on spin and press releases, as someone who worked in the beef export business for several years, I feel Bord Bia, albeit among the best in the world at what it does, is better at marketing than selling Tullamore Dew or Ballymaloe Relish than it is at opening up markets for manufacturing beef, for example.

The political world loves to bash the processors. It is easy to bash them in isolation, but one cannot do it without acknowledging that almost 45% of the animal is sold for less than €3 a kilo while a good 25% is sold for less than €2 a kilo. There are limited markets for that sort of manufacturing beef. The Philippines, for example, was, traditionally, a buyer, but that is packed to the hilt at the moment. There is some product going to South Africa. As we are the goody two-shoes of Europe and bearing in mind our responsibilities with the Ukrainian crisis, we are not interested in exporting to Russia although France, Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark have done bilateral deals to gain access for their 90 VL, visual lean, and 70 VL product.

We need to be more proactive. If the big boys have bilateral deals then "Goody Two Shoes" is not the rightful place of the Irish farming community. We want the ability to access that as well.

In the tradition of Patrick Rogan, when the new Government is formed next week, as we all hope, I hope that at a minimum, there is a junior Minister and an assistant secretary in the air full time and I mean full time in terms of manufacturing beef, vacuum-packed beef, frozen beef to third countries and live exports because we are good at spin but not so good at opening doors. I will give an example. The number of BSE-era restrictions on the import of Irish beef is prohibitive. The under 30 months rule is ridiculous in the extreme. Great Britain, which arguably had a far more difficult and severe issue with BSE, has less prohibitive veterinary health certification in respect of exporting to other countries. Countries like Oman and Saudi Arabia are beginning to open up but it involves a 30-month rule. A time-restricted market involving a 30-month restriction is not an open market. It does not suit our export market and does not suit the grass-finished animal because one cannot do it in 30 months.

We need to focus very heavily on live exports. Egypt was opened to much fanfare before the election. I checked before I came in here and not one animal has been exported live to Egypt. While we have a Department with responsibility for both agriculture and the marine, I am reliably informed that this is to do with marine restrictions on boats coming in. For example, if there is a market for 1,500 animals to be exported to Egypt, there are issues on the marine side and technicalities and restrictions are placed on them. I am told a "white flag" standard is applied to the export of live animals that is not being applied to the transportation of humans. Somewhere in the restrictions, we are losing sight of what we are trying to achieve. It is not a case of non-compliance. Of course we want to be in line with the World Organisation for Animal Health, OIE, which is the inter-governmental agreement on the control of disease to which we are all signed up. We do not want to break any rules in respect of that. However, as somebody who has worked in the business, I am bemused as to why instead of seeking to open markets and facilitate and spread our products far and wide, we are at times our own worst enemies in terms of the literal interpretation of rules and putting them into a practically unworkable situation.

An assistant secretary and a junior Minister should be in the air full time. The first priority is to have all BSE-era restrictions in respect of veterinary health certification for Ireland throughout the world lifted. They are unnecessary. Any market with those rules does not respect the fact that this is a BSE-free country. Great Britain, which had a more difficult problem in that regard, has sought proactively to have those BSE-era restrictions lifted for its exports. In respect of live shipping, from my own inquiries I know there is a market for in-calf heifers in the Moroccan market but we cannot export there. There is the marine issue about which I spoke but there is also the issue of veterinary health certification. We need to be much more proactive on this. As somebody who has marketed and exhibited in the big world trade fairs such as Anuga in Cologne and every other year at SIAL in Paris, I know that it is easy to sell Tullamore Dew and Ballymaloe Relish, with the greatest respect to those type of products. It is more difficult to sell the less sexy tens of thousands of tonnes of manufacturing beef that ultimately will maintain a reasonable price here.

Article 39b of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union states that farmers are entitled to a fair price for their produce except there are no regulations underpinning the enforcement of that. From supermarket multiples through to processors dictating weight limits and so on for farmers, this is having a very negative impact on prices for farmers. It is wrong, unfair and anti-competitive and we should be lobbying in a European context to have regulations put in place to underpin Article 39b so that farmers can receive fair treatment.

In respect of TTIP, Mercosur and the Sustainable Energy Trade Agreement, SETA, as much as opening wider markets for other Irish products attracts us, we must be very careful. I use Mercosur as one example. It is proposed to bring in 78,000 tonnes with a tariff of 7.5%. If this steak meat alone comes in, it would mean that 30% or €8 billion worth of the steak beef market in Europe would be gone. That would wipe out this country. The Minister should be very careful. Whatever post he takes up in the new Administration, he should make sure that whoever is Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine takes those points on board.

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