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

I commend the Rural Independent Group for bringing this motion to the House. I also commend Deputy Nolan for leading on this important issue. I confirm that Sinn Féin Deputies are happy to support the motion.

The Irish family farm stands as the bulwark of rural Ireland. The family farm network remains the main economic driver of our communities. In times of economic downturn we turn consistently to farmers and they never let us down. The success of family farms is a success for us all. When a small farm in our constituency makes a profit, it is not siphoned off to a tax haven or distributed in shareholder dividends, it is spent in the local community, the hardware store and the grocer. It goes to the local GAA draws, the local farm contractor, the local pubs and restaurants. The problem increasingly is that farmers, in particular beef farmers, are not making a profit to redistribute in communities. Farm incomes have remained static at best for more than two decades and successive Governments have simply allowed the position to worsen. For the past five years, Sinn Féin has called for radical reform to deliver for farm families, in particular in the beef sector. We have outlined what I have described as the three Fs – a fair CAP, fair play and fair prices. We now know that there will not be a fair CAP. Irish farming has been sold out in that regard. By the end of the next EU budget cycle Ireland will be paying an additional €1 billion into the EU budget every single year, but the CAP budget will be significantly reduced in real terms. That is all in the context of Irish farmers being expected to do more and to receive less.

I am disappointed that some stakeholders and media outlets have failed miserably to stand up against the Government or Phil Hogan when this sell-out happened, and the CAP cake was being shrunk, who now at the last minute are agitating and pitting farmer against farmer as to how the cake should be divided. I say categorically to the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, and his colleagues that it would be an absolute scandal in the context of the shrinking budget if any single individual or enterprise is still receiving more than €100,000 in farm payments at a time when most farmers are struggling to survive on a fraction of that. The time for an upper limit payment of approximately €60,000 per annum is now. Most Irish farmers today are producing more food to higher standards than their parents but with less income to show for it, while at the other end we see that produce being used as a loss leader for large retailers who alongside the processors are making ever-increasing profits. Therein lies the big secret of Irish agriculture: that there is money to be made in beef. The problem is that the money is not going to the people who are doing all the work, our local family farmers, it is going to the Larry Goodmans, the factories and the multinational retail giants.

Farmers cannot work together for fear of injunctions from factories or warnings from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, yet in the meat industry we see increased consolidation all the time and decreasing competition and everybody, apart from the Government and its agencies, knows that there is wholesale collaboration between the factories on prices and that there is, in effect, a cartel in operation. They can make the rules such as the 30-month one or the four-movement one. They can call them bonuses, when everybody knows that they are actually penalties, without any logical basis and they can operate without an ounce of transparency. The situation is compounded by corporate structures whereby in one instance a factory is owned by at least five unlimited companies registered in states as varied as the Isle of Man and Luxembourg. They can strengthen their hold on the sector through the use of factory feedlots and without even blushing, the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, can say his Department has no analysis whatsoever on the impact they have on prices or the environment.

The EU directive on unfair trading practices does not go far enough. So far, the Government's implementation of the directive does not go far enough. What we need is a regulator with real teeth to hold the factories and the retailers to account. I am not that pushed on what name we give to such a regulator, but it must have the power to address unfair and imbalanced trading relationships within the sector and additional powers to investigate and the ability to level real penalties on the factories that are bleeding family farmers dry. That is the least farmers expect and deserve and that is the litmus test for the Government.

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