Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I apologies on behalf of Deputies Michael and Healy-Rae, who are currently attending their uncle's funeral on Zoom. Our sympathies go out to their family.

I was in Cahir last week to meet the IFA farmers. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful turnout, with a huge crowd in the square in Cahir. The farmers got huge applause and a great welcome from the customers, shoppers, shopkeepers, shop owners and everyone else. Ní neart go cur le chéile. That is what it is all about. Farming is so important. We are all only one step away from it. I declare that I am a hill farmer and have a sheep farm that I have leased to my son. I want to be honest about that. I have a direct question for the Minister and I want an answer in writing. Some €1.5 billion is ring-fenced under CAP for schemes. The Minister, on the Government's behalf, can provide up to 57% co-funding on that. Is he going to do that? Some payments have fallen behind already. The farmers have been blamed for being laggards but it is the Government that is the laggard and it is blackguarding farming.

I echo what Deputies Nolan and Michael Collins said about backbenchers coming in here and offering nice platitudes about supporting farming while telling us we are scaremongering. Some farming organisations also said we were scaremongering but they are here today and are now worried, when the horse has bolted. What is happening in the context of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill, which those Deputies are going to vote for tonight, is nothing short of an attack on rural Ireland and on farming families.

I wish the Minister well in his talks on convergence. I expect that it will come out around 75%. We can live with that and be happy with it but these are Mickey Mouse schemes. REPS was a decent scheme and then GLAS came in but what is in place now is folly. By the time farmers pay an adviser to submit the scheme and everything else they get nothing out of it. It must be profitable for the farmer to get out of bed and do his or her work. They put their shoulders to the wheel and fed us as a nation right through the years. They are the people who brought us out of three recessions. We are praising them now and they will be well if they are left alone but there is too much regulation and red tape. Above all, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is hovering over them like Petticoat Loose in Bay Lough, vulturing down on top of them with his mad ideas.

Farmers do an awful lot in respect of climate change. They accept that and understand it but they cannot be made scapegoats and that is what is going to happen tonight. It is dastardly that our group was only given six minutes to debate the CAP reform proposals. Giving that kind of time to rural Ireland is an indictment of the Minister and the Government. Farming is the most important industry we have and we are going to have four hours tonight to ram through a Bill to try to kill it off altogether. It is shameful and if Deputies from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and some Independents come in tonight and vote for that they should hang their heads in shame.

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