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

Next week, we may have agreement on the next Common Agricultural Policy. I raised the CAP process with the Taoiseach two weeks ago and he accused me of being anti-European. I raised the CAP with the Minister for Agriculture, Deputy McConalogue, last week and he accused me of wanting all decisions to be made at European level. It would be appropriate for Fianna Fáil to learn that it is possible to defend Irish family farmers both at Irish and EU levels. Given that so many of the policies, standards and regulations that guide the work of family farmers are being decided at European level, it is absolutely appropriate that an Irish Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine would fight on their behalf at EU level. However, that is not what we have had from the Government.

In fact, one of the first actions of the Taoiseach on taking office last year was to sign off on a really bad European budget deal. That budget negotiation - I am being generous by referring to it as a negotiation - saw the proportion allocated to agriculture reduce from 37% to 30% and therein lies the crux of the challenges we now face. There was no word of flexibility on whether Ireland would agree to or have any flexibility regarding how the €13 billion of the so-called common defence fund, the centralised military structure now to be created within the EU, would be allocated. There was no sense of or argument in terms of flexibility for the hundreds of billions of euro that will be spent on various other streams of the European budget that will bring virtually no benefit to the Irish people.

The first indication that the Irish Government was the defender of sovereignty and the need for flexibility at a national level came when at a European level there were proposals that would take money away from those such as Larry Goodman and the sheikhs and put it into the hands of family farmers. All of a sudden, the Government became the defender of the Irish people. Of course, that is a ruse because, despite arguing for flexibility and sovereignty, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine acknowledged in the House last week that he has no intention of bringing before the Houses of the Oireachtas the CAP strategic plan that will outline how he intends to use the flexibility for which he has been fighting so hard and actually stalled the CAP talks. The Minister should speak to his constituents in County Donegal. What he would hear might surprise him. They see very little difference in terms of the outworkings of decisions made by bureaucrats in Brussels or in Agriculture House. They are all bureaucrats at the end of the day. What people want are decisions that are made in the best interests of rural communities and family farmers. Therefore, today is an appropriate day for the Government to come clean regarding its intentions.

The Minister for Agriculture, Deputy McConalogue, appears to be the only person with any interest in Irish farming who does not have a position on the key elements of the next CAP. He has no position on how much should be redistributed in the context of convergence even though his fellow spokesperson on agriculture while in opposition for Fianna Fáil during the last CAP talks organised public meetings the length and breadth of the country, slamming the then Fine Gael Government for refusing to support redistributive measures. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine appears to be the only person who does not have a position in respect of whether there should be front-loading and what proportion of acreage should be allocated to front-loading, a position and proposition that would disproportionately support and benefit farmers in his constituency. The Minister says he supports an upper limit CAP payment in terms of the payments that any single entity can receive and that he supports that level being at €60,000 but he has not put on the record clearly that he is going to fight against any discretion or opt-outs that would allow people to continue to draw down the obscene sums that we have again seen in recent weeks. He still has not articulated whether he has put that proposition to the European negotiations or whether he is willing to stall the negotiations a second time if it means that those on obscene payments would continue to be allowed to do so under the current arrangements. Next week will tell a big story. I hope we will finally reach a point where an Irish Government and an Irish Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine go to Brussels and actually fight for Irish family farmers.

See this speech in context