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

They have forgotten where we came from. I do not know where they think they are going but I know they have forgotten where we have come from.

I am standing 100% with the farmers of Ireland who are fighting for survival. I am speaking predominantly about the small family farm. I hear people saying farmers own land but no farmer in Ireland owns his or her farm. Farmers possess it from the time it is given to them. They use it to make a living or a part-time living for their families. They do not own it. They do not look on it as an asset. They look on it as something they are holding on to in order to pass it on to the next generation, be it a son, daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, preferred niece or preferred nephew. I do know one thing for certain and that is they will not carry it into the ground with them when they are put six feet under. I never yet saw a farmer take land with him or her. Farmers know they are not taking it anywhere with them. They know they are passing it on to the next generation.

All of the people I know who own land want to leave it after them in a better way than they got it. They want to make improvements. They want to knock a ditch or build a bit of a shed. They want to improve an old bad road where a pipe needed to be put across it. Where old flags or gullets might have fallen down or got broken they want to dig them out and put in a proper gullet or a proper pipe. They want to reclaim land, knock and grow trees and grow and cut grass. They want to improve the place in every way they can.

The simple thing they want to do is make something very small, ordinary and decent, which is a small bit of profit. Whether people are gardaí, dentists, nurses, teachers, working for the local authority or whatever they are doing in life, all they want to do is make a living and a modest amount of money so they can pay their debts, cover their costs and be able to run the show. At present, and the reason we have tabled this Private Members' motion, and the reason Fianna Fáil, fair dues to it, did the same last week, is we want to acknowledge that our farming community is in the height of trouble. Any person who produces anything or improves anything believes he or she will make some little bit of profit. Somebody who bought an old broken down motor car or tractor, fixed it up and sold it would think common sense would prevail and that he or she would make a couple of euro out of it. People can put a bull into a field with a cow and that can result in a calf. At the end of the day, if that calf is brought into this world and reared and if that calf gets fat and into beef and the farmer takes it to the factory thinking he or she will make enough money to pay costs, he or she will be wrong because farmers are not making enough money to pay costs.

Some people are waking up. Some politicians around the country are waking up and thinking farming is in crisis and that people with suckler cows are in crisis. They do not realise this is been going on for a long time. For years, people with cows and calves and rearing beef have not been making money. This did not start in the past couple of months when the issue has been highlighted, and rightly so, by the Beef Plan movement, the IFA and various organisations. Of course, the protest happened and I am the first to admit thousands of cattle need to be killed and the sheep sector has been affected. I know people who desperately want to pay college fees and pay for education but they cannot do so. Even though we are speaking about bad prices, they want to get some price because, as the Minister knows, they have to sell. It has caused major disruption but it had to happen because the problem had to be highlighted.

People are making money out of beef all right but what is highly unfair is that those who are not making any money are those who produce it. They are the people who are up late at night with cows calving and who have cows going wrong and calves dying. They are suffering misfortune and every type of penal servitude that God can bestow upon any man or woman. These people find themselves in severe difficulty.

What people are going through is beyond belief. At the end of the day they are left with a massive bill in the local creamery they cannot afford to pay. It is as simple as that. They carry their calves, sell their weanlings, fatten cattle, sell them to the factory, get their money and by the time they start paying the contractors, paying for fertiliser and feed they will have got nothing out of it but a puff of smoke.

These people are not expecting to make a lot of money, but God blast it, it is a very fair ordinary decent thing for them to make enough money to pay their debts and have a bit of a living so they can pay their electricity bill, pay for the messages, rear their children, send them to school, run the car and tractor, but now they cannot.

At this critical time Ministers are talking about imposing a carbon tax to put penal servitude upon penal servitude. This is what is being proposed by the Government. It will cripple the most vulnerable people in Ireland who are people in rural Ireland. This is probably one of the most anti-rural governments since the foundation of the State because every decision it makes centres on improving things in urban areas and disenfranchising rural areas. It comes back to what I have been saying since the first day I came in here and sat in a far corner of this House. I said certain people in this House believe there is no life beyond the Red Cow roundabout. I am trying to tell the Taoiseach every day to wake up and realise Ireland is a bigger place than Dublin. It does not stop just out the road there. Ireland is a big country and it takes a lot of time to travel around it. There is an awful lot of diversity of people in it. I have nothing but respect for people from Dublin, but the Taoiseach is a Taoiseach for all of Ireland and not just for Dublin.

Unfortunately, when it comes to agriculture many of our Ministers may as well be looking up into the blue moon tonight as try to understand what it is to run a small family farm. They really do not have a clue. I am too polite to say where I like to think their heads are stuck, but they are certainly not stuck into agriculture. They do not realise the difficulties and genuine hardships on family farms.

The small family farm is not an asset; it is something these people want to pass on to future generations. Our young people are very astute, smart and clever. When they see the difficulties people in the farming community have at present and what their parents and grandparents are going through in trying to run the family farm, they will say they are wasting their time. I do not want them to think they are wasting their time. I want to see the factories giving a fair price. If the factories, shops and beef barons can make money out of beef, why in the name of God can the ordinary decent man and woman rearing beef not make money?

Our small farms need to become profitable even if only on a part-time basis. I am not trying to say a small farm will be able to make a full-time living, but at least if farmers had some other off-farm income the farm itself should wash its face and make a little bit of profit. That is all we are looking for in this Private Members' motion. I am very grateful to Fianna Fáil for tabling its motion last week. When I see the crowd from Labour, the crowd from the Green Party and the non-existent Fine Gael Party Members, I compliment Fianna Fáil Members who were here all night. Where, in the name of God, are the people who are forgetting we are a predominantly agriculture-based country? Anyone looking in here tonight would say they have lost their way. How can they know where they have come from if they do not know where they are going? I know where we want to go with this motion. We want a thing called fair play for our farmers.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle and I am sorry for going on.

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