Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It appears to me that the Taoiseach went to Brussels and his intention was to agree whatever transpired regardless of the cost. The big losers in the deal announced are farmers and rural communities not just in Ireland but across the European Union. I found the Taoiseach's defence of what is a 9% cut in the Common Agricultural Policy budget pathetic. To suggest that the overall CAP budget increased from 29% in the Commission's proposal to 31% in the final deal and to try to sell that as some form of victory is bizarre considering that in the last multiannual financial framework, MFF, CAP funding, as a proportion of the overall budget, was 37%. Even on the Taoiseach's new parameters it has never been used because if it had been then every MFF negotiation that an Irish Government has been involved in since the 1980s would have been considered an abysmal failure considering at that point the CAP made up about 75% of the overall budget.

Our farmers are terrified as not only are they facing this cut, they are facing the prospect of 40% of all funding being reliant on some unknown climate criteria. We do not know if this will be beneficial or if it will result in additional bureaucracy and costs. Rural communities are faced with a possible €7.5 billion reduction in rural development funding. All the while, they are being told to wait for a potential Brexit relief fund. It should be remembered that if we need to draw down Brexit relief funding it means we are in deep trouble. Arguably, even if we were to get the full €5 billion that is being allocated across the European Union for that emergency fund, it would not make up the damage that would be done to our economy or our farm network.

The big question that needs to be asked, particularly of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party Deputies who are trying to laud this deal, is whether they will stand for what has been a sell-out of our rural communities and for what has been a decimation of our family farm network. The Taoiseach may have rubbished this when I put it to him yesterday, but family farmers are operating in Ireland today which will not be operating in five years' time as a result of this budget. That is nothing to celebrate and it is no victory that the Government should be claiming.

See this speech in context