Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. If we are to be serious about ensuring we have a profitable beef industry, we have to take radical steps. I come to this debate as a suckler farmer. The beef task force being set up must take a clinical look at processors. An industrial engineer should look at the factories, including their costs, outputs and work processes. Financial accountants should also advise the task force on the factories' assets, depreciation and overheads. We all know factories have to run a profit because nobody will survive without a profit but, as we go forward in these negotiations, we and the farming community need to clearly understand what margin the factories are achieving. Over the summer, the critical issue was that the factories were making millions of euro, as the previous speaker said, and the farmers were making nothing. We have to take a radical approach. We should get an industrial engineer to look at the factories and financial accountants to look at the costs involved in order that farmers can make a legitimate claim to have a viable income. Agriculture is clearly the biggest indigenous industry on the island of Ireland. Given the various incomes streams it generates, it is vital that we protect the sector. If the Government is serious about doing so, the legitimate expectations debated here both last week and today, and the advice from the farming community, have to be listened to like never before because we are in a serious crisis.

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