Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Some 355 workers were laid off today by ABP. Some 6,000 workers have been laid off in total. Thousands more are facing lay offs and those who have been laid off temporarily fear that it will be more than temporary. In this dispute to date, we have heard the voice of the meat industry, the Government and, at least to some extent, the voice of the farmers. It is time for the voice of the meat factory workers to be heard. I encourage them to raise their voices and to get organised to defend their interests in their area, their workplace and throughout the country, since it is a national issue. Other speakers have pointed out that meat factories have attempted to join trade unions and have attempted to win recognition in their workplace for their trade unions. That recognition has been denied. An attempt has been made to push them back when they have tried to organise.

When the meat factories reopen, they should be organised, unionised workplaces and the meat factory workers need to begin a discussion on that now. They can take a degree of inspiration from the farmers because the farmers have stood and fought their ground against powerful forces in the establishment. The meat industry and beef barons are a powerful force. Attempts have been made to use the courts against them, including court injunctions. The farmers have stood their ground and defied that successfully. Workers, and not just meat factory workers, can and should take some inspiration from that. If meat factory workers are discussing the position they find themselves in and the threat of temporary lay-offs being more than temporary, then an issue which needs to be discussed and considered is the idea of saying that workers would go into the meat factories and stay there, state that these are their jobs and they will not leave until they have their jobs back. That would need to be at least discussed and considered. When the plants reopen, will there be a fair and just settlement or not? There should be a just settlement for the farmers and their families. The farmers say that for €10 paid on beef, they get €2, with €2.90 going to the processors and a majority, €5.10, going to the big retailers. That is an extremely unjust division of the spoils.

Average farm income in this country was €23,000 last year but the average dry-stock farm income was only €10,000. There are farmers on those picket lines who live in poverty with their families. The core issue here is the base price for cattle which has dropped from €4 per kilogram last year to €3.45 per kilogram now and the talks last weekend did not change that. It seems to me that the mood among the protesting farmers is that the base price issue must be addressed. The final say on whether the protest continues will not be in the hands of the beef processors, the Government or the President, for that matter; it will be with those farmers at the factory gates. They are the ones who have to make the decision and there needs to be an increase in the base price to have any chance of a settlement here. If they reject the current proposal, they are well within their rights to do so. It is a democratic issue for a group who are involved in a campaign. It will then have to be resolved on the basis of a better offer being made.

The Labour Party representatives have left the Chamber but I always enjoy listening to Deputy Penrose. He referred twice to the Labour Party being mistaken for communists but I do not know if there are too many people who would make that mistake these days. He also commented on a relative of his who he said was as happy as Larry, which was an interesting phrase to use in a debate about the beef industry. Deputy Penrose was right to say that there are other crises looming for the beef industry, including Brexit. The Government's position, as I understand it, is that in the event of strong blows to agribusiness and the beef industry in the course of a no-deal Brexit, for example, subsidies will be provided by the State to the industry. One of the stated aspirations is to help to protect jobs but as I understand it - and I ask the Minister to clarify this - it is not intended to make the protection of jobs a condition of state aid. It seems to be more of a hit-and-hope scenario; here is the state aid and we hope that you do not make as many people redundant or lay off as many as would otherwise be the case. What is being proposed here is to give State subsidies to some of the richest business people in the country, those who dominate the beef trade, namely, the beef barons, who have attempted to drive this dispute in order to starve farmers back to work, to get their own way and defend their own profits. As other speakers have rightly said, they have also attempted to use thousands of workers, including low-paid and vulnerable workers with families, as pawns to get their way.

I am in favour of State intervention to protect jobs in the event of a Brexit crisis. However, I am in favour of a different type of intervention to that being proposed. I was on radio last week, on C103, a station well known to the Minister. I spoke to Ms Patricia Messinger, an interviewer who is also known to the Minister, who had been debating the beef crisis for an hour beforehand. I had not had a chance to listen to the previous debate and was coming in cold. I raised what I thought might be a new idea for the debate, namely, that the beef industry should be taken out of the hands of the beef barons. I suggested that it should be taken out of private ownership and, in the interests of society, placed in public ownership and under democratic control. To my surprise, she said that I would not believe the number of phone calls and messages that the station had gotten that day supporting that very idea. I think she thought that I had been listening in and was jumping on the bandwagon but I was actually coming to the discussion cold. That is an idea that would be popular in society. It would certainly be popular among meat workers who would see it linked to the defence of jobs and it would be popular among protesting farmers who would see it as a way to achieve a more just solution than the one being offered by the beef barons and profiteers. I am putting on the table in this debate the idea of public ownership of the beef industry, under democratic control. I could make some points about the supermarkets in that context but time precludes it. Perhaps I will raise that issue again on another day.

Finally, Friday is a day of global strike action on the issue of climate change. Once more school students across the world will leave their schools and come out onto the streets to demand change to protect the climate and defend the environment. Friday's strike will have a new element to it because for the first time significant numbers of workers and trade unionists will participate. I understand that in Britain, for example, four major trade unions have called on people to take action on Friday. That will be a new element, although in the main, it will still be a protest of young people. That shows which way the wind is blowing. Agriculture based primarily on beef, given the climate crisis, is not sustainable over time. In any case, there is a new generation that is eating and will eat a lot less meat and many have made the decision not to eat meat at all because of climate change. We need a sustainable agriculture and that means that there must be a transition away from beef but that transition must be just. It must be a just transition for all, including the workers in the industry and the farmers who supply it at the moment. Such a just transition cannot and will not be achieved on the basis of market economics or on the basis of control of the industry by beef barons and profiteers. It can only be done on the basis of State intervention, subsidies and public ownership of the industry under the democratic control of the workers in the industry and of the farmers who supply it.

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