Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend my party colleagues, Deputies Charlie McConalogue, Jackie Cahill and Margaret Murphy O'Mahony for pursuing this issue since last September. I will be brief because much of the argument has already been made.

We gathered before Christmas at the launch of a report on the potential of Irish whiskey tourism. The launch was a celebration of the growth in the number of small distilleries across the country but here we are, trying to defend the men and women who will be the foundation of that industry against the lack of willingness on the part of the Government to keep them in business and to compensate them for recent unprecedented climate change events.

The notion that the EU would block a payment of €4 million in compensation when there are ways of dealing with severe climatic events under European rules is absolutely bizarre. It is even more bizarre when the responsible EU Commissioner is actually one of our own. If we cannot convince our own EU Commissioner and if the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine cannot convince his own former party colleague of the need to do this then there is something seriously wrong in the Department.

This week the Government found €120 million to provide for badly needed pay increases for lower paid civil servants and we welcome that. The Government was able to find €120 million down the back of a couch but it cannot find €4 million to keep people in business and to keep families on their farms. A precedent was created by the fodder schemes and schemes for potato growers. Today, on 18 January 2017, I will quote from a statement made on 6 January 2010:

It is important that [the] Minister ... shows empathy and understanding at this time with growers who face the wipeout of their entire crop. It is estimated that as much as 75% of the 6,000 unharvested acres of the country's potato crops are already devastated, with the remaining 25% under increasing threat. The principle of the Minister intervening during adverse weather conditions has been established during the recent flooding crisis with the fodder scheme.

These were the words of the current Minister, Deputy Michael Creed. The then Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Brendan Smith, who was a very successful Minister, responded not just to Deputy Creed but also to farmers and to their needs. I ask the Minister to do the same.

See this speech in context