Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The numbers participating in last night's debate and the numbers seeking to contribute today clearly demonstrate that this is a huge issue in rural Ireland. Rural Ireland and its farmers feel totally abandoned by the Government. For months the Government has been put on notice that urgent intervention was needed, yet it failed to intervene until the 11th hour and only did so after farmers had endured thousands of lost man hours at factory gates and thousands of factory workers, who bear no responsibility whatsoever in the setting of beef prices, had been temporarily laid off. Some of those workers will not even be entitled to any social welfare.

I compliment the farming representative bodies that have come to the talks and achieved concessions, but it must be noted that these concessions are only the start. What the Beef Plan Movement has achieved in its establishment as a PO must be noted. There is, however, huge mistrust out there - of the Department, Meat Industry Ireland, MII and Bord Bia. What MII now needs to do is show its goodwill and confirm that there will be no erosion of the base price. There are two concrete areas where the Government can show its willingness to help the sector. The first is offal. I understand that Ireland is the only EU member state that has a distance limit for offal. That can be changed by the Minister of State and his colleagues. By doing so they would open up competition and remove the dominance of one player. The second area, which has been mentioned already, is export of live cattle. Much more needs to be done to ensure adequate facilities to keep this competitive option open.

The time for action is now. We have had inaction from the Government for far too long.

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