Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The suckler cow herd of almost 1 million is pivotal in supporting the local economy in rural Ireland, with every €1 of support provided to suckler farmers generating more than €4 of economic activity in rural parishes. We need this badly because our villages and towns have fallen to rack and ruin. If not for rural farming people, many of them would have closed completely. Farming families underpin annual beef exports worth €2.4 billion, but these farms generate average incomes below €13,000 and fully depend on CAP to maintain their livelihoods. Average cattle-rearing farms earn an average income of €12,680 when suckler cow production is the dominant farm enterprise. I do not need to tell the Minister about the cost of beef production, and he knows well that beef farmers feel the squeeze. The average beef price is hovering at €3.75 per kilogram or lower and the average cost of production is €4 per kilogram. This is not sustainable, as the Government has heard over and over again. It had to be pulled kicking and screaming to bring in the allowance for the suckler cow and it brought it in at a rate of €40, but that is no good.

My colleagues and I have only a short time during the debate to put forward our case. I am passionate about the issue because I was reared on a small farm. We will stand with the farming communities in attendance and fight for them in order that they might obtain a better deal. They cannot and will not survive on what is currently available. The president of the IFA recently stated the beef forum has not worked for the farming community, that it was a talking shop and that it is not achieving what it was supposed to achieve when it was set up by the former Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Coveney, in 2014.

Let us get moving on this issue, give the people concerned a fair deal and back the Irish Farmers Association and the Beef Plan group which have put a significant number of people together to fight for a good, honest deal for the farming community.

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