Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Other speakers have mentioned the real distress and pressure the ongoing fodder crisis is causing. Farmers are paying at least double the normal cost of feed which is an unbearable pressure for them. It is a scandalous situation. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine met in emergency session last week but the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, has yet to outline any comprehensive plan to deal with the fodder shortage. That needs to happen urgently. Unfortunately, he was not in the Chamber today. The Minister said last week that he was prepared to talk to banks about credit for farmers and was prepared to pay for the transport of silage from one end of the State to the other. He also said he would not issue vouchers for feed concentrate to alleviate the very real animal welfare problems.

Teagasc advised subsidy of, and access to, these meal concentrates. My colleague, Deputy Martin Kenny, asked that the Minister start paying the 15% outstanding green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, payments. That is a very sensible suggestion. Will the Minister do that? He should pay the farmers now because the need is real and acute. His prime responsibility is to Irish farmers who are in crisis, not to the EU rules. The transport subsidy scheme has been a failure and has merely resulted in the price of fodder rising and in spreading the shortage. Had the Minister spent the same amount of money on vouchers for meal as he spent on the transport subsidy and as advised by Teagasc we would not be in the situation we are now in. The Taoiseach did not respond to the earlier questions on this subject. I await his response and hope it will be more positive than that from the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Doyle.

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