Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis na Teachtaí Dála thall as an rún seo a chur os comhair na Dála.

I was very proud to stand with the farmers at factories at six different locations throughout the State in recent weeks. The farmers have shown many of us in this country how important it is to stand up for what is right and just in our lives and to fight for a proper income for our families. For me, the problem of this crisis is very simple. The beef industry is an asymmetric industry. It is an oligopoly. There are a small number of massive factories that have enormous power over every single condition of sale, including price, and tens of thousands of farmers who are so small that they have no influence over any condition of sale, including price. It is completely asymmetric, unbalanced, broken and distorted. We can see that by the fact that one factory can make a profit of €170 million in one year, be tax resident in Luxembourg, pay a 0.5% rate of tax, have assets of €3.5 billion and expect the farmer to bring a beast to the gate at below cost. It is a shocking injustice that a factory could make so much profit and expect the supplier to bring the product to the gate at a loss. By participating in this market farmers are making a serious loss. The average wage of a farmer is now between €8,000 and €10,000. It is only at that level because there is a subsidy. The subsidy makes up 140% of the income of a farmer. That is a startling fact. It shows that if the farmer stopped participating in the market, he or she would be much better off.

This injustice is black and white. It is an absolute disgrace that it continues and the Government is an absolute disgrace for presiding over it. The attitude of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to this has been one of laissez-faire. The Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government has sat on its hands right throughout this process as though it was not its fault. It amuses me that Fine Gael states that it is the party of the free market, yet so many markets in this country are absolutely distorted. The beef market is not the only one. The insurance market is distorted. It took the European Union to investigate the cartel in that sector. The housing market is absolutely distorted. It seems that there is nobody with an economics background on the Fine Gael benches who can sort out some of the distortions happening in the markets.

I spoke to a senior Fine Gael Deputy in the middle of the crisis. That Fine Gael Deputy said that the expectations of the farmers were unreasonable because they expected a price that was above the break-even point. It is amazing that a person who claimed to represent the farmers believed the expectation to make a living was absolutely unreasonable. Teagasc tells us that one third of farmers in the State are making a living from their farms, one third are only making a living because they are also working off the farm, and another third is making a loss, which means they are being pushed off their farms and into poverty and debt. I will say this as well. I do not believe all the factories are the same. Some of the factories saw this crisis as an opportunity to allow some of the smaller factories to go bust so that they could win their contracts.

Most of the speeches from the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government tonight have been fiddling around the edges. If we do not talk about the base price and the fact that farmers have to make a living from their activities, then we are not at the races. We are not being serious about the problem. This week I introduced a new Bill which would ban the below-cost selling of beef on an interim basis over a period of time in which the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission could do the job it is meant to do and ensure balance in the market. The Bill has a sunset clause and would fall into abeyance after a year if that market is fixed. I encourage Deputies from across the Chamber to support that Bill. I also note that the Beef Plan Movement's representatives are coming to the audiovisual room this Thursday at 11 a.m. I encourage Deputies to come and listen to them.

There is much more to this. These protests were about much more than the price of beef. They were about the straw that broke the camel's back. I believe this was a form of insurrection in rural Ireland. People talk about 20-20 vision. The Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government has M50 vision. It cannot see this country beyond the M50. We have an excess concentration of wealth, infrastructure and population in one small part of the country while population is falling in the rest of the country. Young people are leaving the rest of the country in their droves. Why would they do otherwise? Why would someone take over a farm that will drive him or her into poverty by cultivating it? It is very important that the Government starts to listen.

The anger over this has not gone away. Many of the farmers were so economically hammered that they had no choice but to return to their farms. The protests may be over, but this crisis is by no means over. I encourage the Government not to squander this opportunity to fix this crisis. Its members must take their hands from underneath their behinds, start to roll up their sleeves and get working on this issue. This is a crisis that we have to fix. We cannot allow a situation where one part of the country is overheating, with new schools being built, while in the rest of the country schools, services, Garda stations, banks and post offices are being closed. We need proper regional development and we need to make sure that rural Ireland can make a living in the future.

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