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

It is only proper manners to offer our sympathies to the Minister and his family on their recent loss.

What has happened over the past number of months is a culmination of the frustration that exists among decent people who only want to make a living. Other people are making money from beef but not the people who produce it, stay up late at night with cows calving, buy ration and take animals in during the winter and try to put weight on them and get them ready for the factory. Those people have not been making money. I compliment farmers, young and old, who stood protesting at the factory gates and brought this to boiling point. Their work culminated in the parties sitting down and trying to thrash out an agreement.

I am not happy for one minute that this agreement can be welcomed with open arms or will solve all our problems because it will not. I compliment the different groups that have worked on this, including the Beef Plan Movement, the Irish Farmers Association and the United Farmers Association. In County Kerry, Mr. Dermot O'Brien, a man from Firies, has come to the forefront of the Beef Plan Movement.

I was at factory gates and met people who were protesting. I will give one example and it would be no harm to listen because these people are neighbours of ours. I met a female farmer one night, a woman who has given her life to farming. She was making a sacrifice to be at the factory gate. She had buried a daughter only a couple of weeks beforehand and was protesting because, as she said, she had to be there. The Minister should think about that. That woman was there because she felt she had to be. She was a respectable woman who had given her whole life to farming. These are the people to whom the Minister and the people operating the factories should be listening. We cannot have a situation where one or two people can have a cartel and control everything. There are ordinary, decent farmers the length and breadth of Ireland who are the backbone of this country and we should be there to protect them.

I will give an example of the frustration that exists. I received an email a while ago from a man who told me he was writing from a total sense of desperation. He and his wife are small beef farmers and, after two loss-making years, they are fighting for their right to earn a living from their family farm. Both their sons are interested in farming and are pursuing green certificates. Unfortunately, as things stand, the ambitions and work of that man and his wife, as well as the ambitions of their sons, are going down the drain. The beef protests that are ongoing are to try to secure a margin for farmers like that. The email goes on to state what that family wants us, as their public representatives, to do for them.

This has happened on the Minister's watch and he was very slow coming out of the traps. Many of us were looking for the Minister and could not find him when we wanted him. It was late in the day when he came out. I do not go backwards; I want to think about going forward. All I want is that our farmers who are producing beef will get fair play and honest pay for what they are producing. They have not been getting it and I am worried they will not get it after this deal. I have concerns about that, as the Minister knows. It is incumbent on every one of us to fight for our farmers. They were the backbone of the country when it went into recession because they were the only people who kept rolling along and always doing their best. We should never forget our farming community. I thank the people who went out and protested because we, as politicians, and the farmers of Ireland, owe them an awful lot.

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