Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Admittedly, it is a similar question. I congratulate the Minister of State on his reappointment and wish him many "years", I would say, but it will probably be months, here because we do not know where we are going.

I suppose the essence of my question is farm income and where it is at. Deputy McConalogue dealt with some parts of it. What gets me, and what gets most farmers, is that the way Irish agricultural produce, particularly meat produce such as beef and sheepmeat, is marketed across Europe and the world as being the cleanest, the greenest and the best produced to the highest quality possible, and yet the prices returned, which I can see when I look at the factory prices for cattle in Ireland or in other parts of Europe, are average or below average compared with those of EU farmers. That should not be the case. If we are producing such a high quality product, the Irish farmer should be a prosperous individual and that is not the case. I want to ascertain here today what plan the Government has to drive this forward to ensure the primary producers get the maximum benefit for the work they put in because they are the ones who put all the work in.

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