Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Deputy McConalogue, on bringing forward this motion calling for direct suckler supports and targeted underspend to low-income farmers. The lure of dairy farming has seen suckler cow numbers fall by up to 20% in some eastern and south-eastern counties. In my county of Waterford we have seen the sharpest decrease in suckler numbers, a reduction of 18.9% since 2014 or a loss of a fifth of the herd. This is a decline from 22,400 to 18,240 in three years. This is substantial and is an extremely worrying trend. The suckler sector faces threats on many fronts, with successive Fine Gael-led Governments found wanting. Suckler farmers are being let down, with the Government accepting at least 70,000 extra tonnes of South American Mercosur beef into the EU. The timing of this could not be any worse for farmers, with Brexit having the potential to place tariffs on half of all our beef exports. As the Minister knows, 50% of all our beef is exported to the UK, and with the uncertainty of Brexit, I believe the numbers will fall even further. Many young farmers are opting to switch to dairying or calf-to-beef systems. Why is this? Why are they turning away from sucklers? To me, the answer is quite clear: they simply cannot make it pay. While suckler farmers underpin our €2.5 billion in beef exports, they generate average incomes below €13,000 each year and they are fully dependent on CAP supports to maintain their livelihoods. Farmers and rural communities depend and rely on this sector. There is no doubt that money earned locally is spent locally. The Government has refused at every avenue to look at any options to introduce a €200 payment per suckler cow. Fianna Fáil has championed this as a key policy and will continue to do so to campaign for its delivery.

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