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

I thank the Minister of State and appreciate and acknowledge his feet are firmly on the ground in this matter. I thank Deputy Carol Nolan, Mr. David Mullins, Mr. Brian Ó Domhnaill and all those who helped us to bring this motion before the Dáil. It is very important. The regulatory system in place is not working. Farmers, especially beef farmers, are being let down. Farmers work hard to make sure cows are in calf and the calves are safely delivered, and enough things can go wrong when a cow is calving. Nothing tends to go wrong in normal hours. It is always in the middle of the night when help is scarce that something goes wrong, like a calve being born backwards. Every type of misfortune known to man, woman and child can befall a farmer and they all happen at the wrong time.

All farmers want is to cover their costs and make a modest profit. That is all any farmer wants but beef farmers are not being allowed to do that. If we consider the cost of maintaining and keeping a cow alive for 12 months, the price a farmer will get for a calf and every other entitlement that applies to that cow, it will not make money for the farmer. Everybody knows that, and it is wrong. All anyone selling a pint of Guinness or a pound of ham or doing a day's work wants is a fair price for what he or she is selling or a fair day's pay. Farmers are not getting that.

More than 80,000 beef farmers are directly or indirectly involved in the production of beef. The beef industry is worth between €2 billion and €3 billion annually.

Let us take the high cost of feed and the proposals that are coming before the Dáil at present. Unfortunately, the Minister, his party and his partners in government all seem to think that the Climate Action Bill and its implications for the farming community will not make a difference. I do not see how they can think that. If farmers are struggling now, how does the Minister think they will fare out when they find themselves bearing the brunt of the burden of the extra charges, extra taxes and extra restrictions? We should remember that this is the Government that is seriously telling farmers that in 2027 when they are spreading slurry, they will have to agitate it by electric means and they will have to spread it by electric means. As I highlighted here previously, that machinery is not in production yet, not in this part of the world anyway.

What we are saying to farmers as well is that we are trying to restrict and reduce the herd here at a time when we cannot make money out of what we are doing and at the same time in South America they can knock down and destroy the Amazon forest, plant grass and feed their animals so they can send them up here in the same way as the bales of briquettes are coming from Germany today while, down the road here, Bord na Móna is closed. Where is the commonsense in that? I will never forgive or forget what the Government is standing by and doing, whether it is to Bord na Móna, the farmers or the fishermen.

I acknowledge that the fishermen are protesting in a flotilla today. They are gone from Dingle, Cahersiveen and around the coast of Kerry, as well as the rest of the country, to protest in a flotilla. What are they protesting about? It is to make an honest living, the same as the farmer with the cows, calves and beef. What do they want to do? They want to make a living. If they cannot understand that in Europe, surely be to God the Government and the Deputies elected here, to a man and woman, should be standing shoulder to shoulder with the farmers of Ireland. We should be saying regulation must be put in place to protect them. The factories should be taken on for the monopolising, demonising and terrorising of farmers because of the way they are controlling the price of beef. It is true to say that the blackguarding that goes on and the regulations that are in place are purposely set up to keep down the price of beef. That is what it is all about. Let us look at the four-movement rule, for instance. It is the biggest load of nonsense and baloney that ever was put in place to try and hurt farmers. I would like the Minister to answer that and to explain it.

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