Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the plight of beef and suckler farmers countrywide. This vital industry is at a critical crossroads because farmers are not covering their costs. This cannot continue. There are two contributing factors. First, factories have a monopoly and are not paying farmers properly or fairly for the high standard of animals being produced and, second, not enough live exports are being sourced by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine or An Bord Bia, which would create competition for the factories and assist farmers in getting fair prices. Farmers throughout the country, including in Kerry, are attending beef plan meetings where they are expressing outrage at the inaction of this Government. They feel they are being neglected.

Last week in this Chamber I highlighted the case of a Libyan buyer who was waiting more than three months for a visa so that he could come here to purchase more than 4,000 bulls worth €5 million. I welcome that, following my intervention, he received his visa, but it is too late because he has gone to Spain to do his business there. I hope he will return to Ireland another time.

The factories are applying ridiculous rules and regulations to trip up farmers. In the case of the four movement rule, if it is shown that an animal has moved more than four times, the factory will reduce the price by €40 to €80, even though the quality of the beef is the same.

They will still kill it and sell it, and it is the same steak on the plate for the consumer.

On the 30-month rule, there is no difference whatsoever between an animal at 29 months or 31 months. If it goes over the age of 30 months, the price of the animal is again reduced by between €40 and €80. If the animal goes over the age of 36 months, the price of the animal is reduced by €200, while the price of bulls that go over the age of 34 months is cut by €350. The factories have databases. They know when every animal was born, and when it reaches the age of 24 months, they will hold it up for a few weeks before selling it at the lower price. The 70-day retention also hurts the trade. We do not have enough lairages in Cherbourg to take the dairy-bred calves out of the country. How is it that animals sell for €200 a head more in the North of Ireland? There is only a boggy ditch between us in places in the North and South of Ireland.

The fifth quarter is the most serious aspect of what the factories are doing to farmers. It is worth more than €270 to the factory but farmers does not get one red cent of it. The factories sell offal, tendons, tongues, hides, hooves and all those parts of the animals but they do not give one cent to the farmer. It is stealing and robbery from farmers who work from dark to dark to put good animals into the factories.

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