Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome my fellow farmers to the Public Gallery. The numbers present tonight show the huge depth of feeling around the crisis in the beef industry. All sectors of the beef industry are in serious trouble. Whether suckler farmers, calf to beef producers, store producers or finishers, everyone is losing money. The number of animals going through our processing plants at the moment is too high to provide a viable return for beef farmers. We have to look again at Harvest 2020 and Food Wise 2025. When a viable return is not given to primary producers, there is no point in producing beef for foreign markets. No initiatives have been taken to attempt to improve the situation of the beef farmer. We suggested a couple of months ago that more research should be carried out in the area of sexed semen. Nothing has been done in that area, but it must be addressed if cross-breeding is to continue into the future. Processors are now talking about dairy calf to beef systems and how profitable they can be. A number of years ago the same processors pressed people to go into Friesian and bull production, yet 18 months later left them high and dry. The way bull finishers were treated by the processors was despicable. Age limit and weight restrictions were used to put the final nails in the financial coffin of bull finishers.

Articles are now being written which suggest that dairy calf to beef is more profitable than suckling. The point is being missed. Nobody is making money. It is a question of losing as little as possible. Weight restrictions mean that fewer animals qualify for quality assurance. These are all things that the Minister should have made sure to address at the beef forum.

We have not yet discussed the hazardous road of Brexit.

Post Brexit, the EU will be 116% self-sufficient in beef production. Even with that scenario staring us in the face, the Commission has made concessions for Mercosur that will allow up to 100,000 tonnes of beef into an oversupplied EU market, which will be another nail in the coffin of the Irish beef industry.

On umpteen occasions, we have heard fanfare about the number of open markets for our beef. We hear of 170 markets worldwide and live exports open in this market and that market, but very few cattle over 12 months of age are exported live. Mere wheelbarrows of beef are exported to markets outside the EU. My colleague has spoken about calf exports. The opportunity to return the market to a state of equilibrium and reduce the numbers available for slaughter in 18 to 20 months has been missed. The Minister's Department and Bord Bia have not risen to the task of putting the infrastructure in place to increase the number of calves exported from this country this spring. While the Minister will tell us that calf exports have increased, not enough have been exported. One can say anything about the percentages, but the markets for our calves exist yet we have not put the infrastructure in place to get calves out of this country in the numbers that are needed. Some weeks this spring, farmers had to accept poor prices for calves because lairage was not available on the Continent and ships were not available to take our calves.

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is well able to tell us as farmers what to do and what we can and cannot do. Has it examined how beef factories operate? In January and February of this year, 54,000 cattle from factory feedlots were killed, which accounted for 17% of the kill, although it did not include contracted cattle. In 2018, 295,000 cattle from factory feedlots were killed. Factories operate a monopoly on price and manipulate the price with the number of cattle that come from factory feedlots, but the competition commission has not addressed this or refuses to examine it.

Farmers are making the decision to close the gates for the last time. Despondency is rife in our beef industry. We need concrete facts about how the Commission will manage Brexit and figures on the commitments. We need to know what financial aids will be put in place to try to salvage the industry. Farmers are turning their backs on the industry and we must reverse that trend now.

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