Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Utter despair has forced individual farmers to resume protests at factories. Beef and suckler farmers are at their wits' end. They are experiencing a severe income crisis and struggling to maintain their livelihoods, educate their children and keep their heads above water coming off the back of a tough time last year between the fodder crisis and a drought. Outside the factory gates the farmers are losing their livelihoods, are entrenched and cannot break even for every animal reared and sold. Stepping inside the factory gates, 6,000 workers have been temporarily laid off and many of them have no access to social welfare payments as they are employed on permits from outside the EU. Over the past seven weeks, a large number of them have exhausted any savings or back-up they may have had as a result of the uncertainty of work since the pickets began on a day-to-day basis. More job losses will follow if the pickets are not lifted. The situation inside the gates is job losses and despair for workers, who want to work but cannot get the animals through the gates. Livelihoods are lost outside the factory gates and jobs are lost inside, and it goes on and on every day. There was hope last weekend, with long hours spent taking and each side giving a little, but if one talks to any farmer, it is on the base price that they want and need movement.

The crisis is damaging our beef industry. It has gone on for far too long. Markets will be lost. Already meat is scarce in shops and restaurants are adjusting menus to exclude beef. Every single available mechanism to facilitate negotiations with meat processors, retailers and farming organisations must be put in place again in order to resolve the outstanding issues. In view of the threat of Brexit and the uncertainty ahead, a solution to the crisis must be found.

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