Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The EU is losing 1,000 farms each and every day. That is the stark finding from a recent report from the European Court of Auditors. I want to raise it today because it brings some additional context to the challenges faced by rural Ireland apart from the farcical roll out of the national broadband plan. I believe we will never see the contract signed. The issue of generational renewal - getting young people to take up farming - has been described as the single greatest threat to agriculture and the fabric of rural Ireland as we have been privileged to know it.

According to the report from the European Court of Auditors, the first problem is the large reduction in the number of farms. In 2005, there were 14.7 million farms in the European Union. The latest available data put the number at approximately 10 million. Almost 5 million farms have disappeared in the intervening period. There is no indication that the speed of this trend is slowing down. This was recently confirmed by the Western Development Commission when it found the number of people working in agriculture in the west of Ireland has decreased by 41% in the past 20 years. We know that and the Government knows that. Its candidates are finding out on the doorsteps. What is equally disturbing is the finding that not only has there been a reduction in the number of young farmers, there is also a serious reduction in the amount of land held by them. The problem is that 80% of European farmers are over 45. One third of farmers are older than 65. The outcome of all this is that the threat to the family farm is growing at an alarming rate. We are now at a point where the largest farms, which make up just 20% of farms, received 80% of European subsidies for agriculture while the other 80% received only 20% of those subsidies. This is a disgraceful figure. According to the European Court of Auditors, this is the political choice we face in deciding the future CAP agreement.

Will the Tánaiste, therefore, accept that we are facing an unprecedented threat to the fabric of rural life in terms of the inability to make farming financially attractive to young people and young families? Small farms right across this State and indeed Europe are being gobbled up daily by large conglomerates. It is happening in my own county, in south Tipperary, with Coolmore's equine industry. Gobbled up and not in the interest of farming. There is no commitment to rural Ireland. They are only interested in bank balances and corporate affairs. They are corporate investments. There is no interest in our schools, our future or our clubs. This was made explicit by members of the European Court of Auditors when they appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. They accepted that there was a long discussion of a proposal of the European Commission to cut the payment for the big farms and to give more to the family farms. However, the proposal was not accepted because the strength of the big industrial farming lobby. This is outrageous. Will the Tánaiste provide assurances as to the measures that we are adopting here to combat this trend of family farms vanishing from the face of the earth?

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