Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being present and I wish to pay a compliment to Deputy Cahill. As well as bringing this Bill forward, he is Chairman of our committee. With Deputies Carthy and Martin Browne and the Senators on the committee, we might have disagreements but it is an enjoyable committee to be in, and I have been on three of them. Deputy Cahill is very constructive. He raps us on the knuckles when we need it but he is a fair Chairman so I want to compliment him on that.

The first thing is that we need cattle in the country for all vets to survive. On the beef exceptional aid measure, BEAM, scheme, the Minister will notice that his Department sent out letters to farmers at different times to tell them how they were getting on. Farmers and their sons might have joined their herd numbers together and there are farmers that have dealer numbers as well. They have hammered it all together in May and they have blown a lot of farmers out of it with the BEAM scheme. I do not know if it was designed that way or what the reason is. The message went out in January or February that everything was sound and lovely. When couples could not get married they decided to marry their herd numbers in recent weeks. This ended up blowing up the BEAM scheme for a lot of farmers who had applied for it so I ask the Minister to look at that.

Deputy Carthy touched on the licensed merchants. These people need a solution. I endorse everything Deputy Carthy has said for the simple reason that they have done their courses. We can say that nothing is changing and that if one has a piece of paper, one can go anywhere. That is right and they stayed on but one will look well if one goes to the vet and asks for a prescription before going to Johnny down the road in the co-op. Farmers will have a puss on them if that happens. That needs to be looked at.

On this Bill, one will get a vet quicker than a doctor in this country and that is the reality. If one has a cow calving at 2 a.m, 3 a.m., 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or any night of the week, within 15 to 20 minutes one will have a vet on the scene. One could wait three, four or five hours for a doctor. That service is great, as is the relationship between the vet and the farmer. The vets around the country who are giving that service must be commended. Problems have started happening in cities but it has moved to certain counties and we are aware of it because the Minister was on the Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine in the previous Dáil. We are aware of the problems that have started in other areas. The Minister of State stated earlier that 24-7 cover is required and that is true but a vet can provide 24-7 cover and tell someone that he or she will be with them in three or four hours because he or she is with Johnny, Paddy and Mary before that. That still ticks the box that covers the vet. It does not provide the service that there is now.

I have a near relation who is a vet. As a youngster he worked in different countries and he was down in the south of England. I just happened to be talking to him one weekend when he was on call and they had to cover about 80 or 90 miles. They were going into the side of London and some of that farmland is not as intensive as it is here. That showed me that when corporate entities are looking after something or taking over something, money is the bottom line for the likes of them. We have a seriously good relationship between vets and farmers around the country. There is a trust in every farmer to ring one's local vet and there is a relationship there. The vet nearly knows the cattle the farmer has in most situations to be frank about it and he or she knows the type of farmer involved.

However, when an entity comes in, let us be blunt about the fact that some of them are coming in from other countries that want to take over the different practices here. There will be the odd vet who will look at the money. They will ask to be shown the money and they will want to take it but we have to think of more than the vet in this. We have to think of the farmer, the service and the country. If one listened to the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, she talked about Ireland. We export a lot of product and we need vets to certify everything that goes out. We have a high standard of animal welfare and we need to keep that going because we are competing with other countries.

We need to make sure that we keep this relationship between the local vet and the local farmer going, because we need to think of animal welfare. If a cow is calving and she is left for seven or eight hours, what situation would she be in? At the moment, within 15 minutes one will have a local vet on the scene no matter what hour of the day or night it is, if one has a ewe lambing for example. This is the service we get throughout the country and we need to appreciate that. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is mighty at shoving its nose into some things but when it came to competition in the beef trade, it was not half as fond at looking at the likes of the factories. It likes to rattle the farmer then, however, and it would nearly leave them with no vets if it could, only big corporate entities in different places.

We cannot have the west of Ireland or a county with one vet on call at weekends and shut down the rest. I will mention the likes of County Galway, for example, where I live. It is as near for me to come to Dublin as it is for me to go to Connemara where Deputy Ó Cuív is. One cannot have one vet on call in a county if the corporate entities take over all the practices and that is what is shaping up, whether we like it or not.

We have seen the first red flag that has been raised and we are lucky that we saw it. It was in the Minister's county that the first flag was raised of problems arising. It is good to get a warning and one can learn from a warning or if a mistake is made. We are legislators and we should let this Bill into the committee. I am sure Deputy Cahill will bring us through all of it, along with the legal people and everyone, and we will thrash it out. I ask one thing of the Minister, I have heard a few bits of stuff here and there about this being a Private Members' Bill. I will ask the Minister to send it into our committee as soon as possible, because the clock is ticking on what is happening.

I understand that there are certain practices in cities that are looking at the small animal sector. I understand there is pretty good money to be had from giving a bit of Ivomec, or whatever they give them, to dogs or cats. These guys are trying to hone in on that sector and they have diverted people. If one looks at England as an example, it has gone down the road of getting people to insure the small animals. This is the new craic that is going on. People are insuring the dog, donkey, pony and everything. The vet will come out then and he or she will nearly bring the animal to the operating theatre to do everything with it but the bottom line on it is that the ordinary person is paying. When one looks at a farmer, he or she could not be insuring every ewe and cow in the place. We need to do realistic things. Farmers would not be able to afford the way that these new corporates are bringing people. Let us not fall into the trap that other countries have fallen into.

Let us make sure that we stand up for, and give credit to, the type of service we have got in recent years. I ask the Minister, the Taoiseach or whoever chooses to push Bills forward or hold them back, to put this Bill into our committee as soon as possible. That way, we will get the ball rolling. The clock is ticking. There have been warnings in Donegal and in cities around the country where things are happening. We need to make sure we stay ahead of it. As Deputy Carthy said, we are lucky insofar as we can get ahead of these issues if we take action now through working together in the Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. We will take input from the Minister and anybody else because we are always willing to listen. We should get working on this Bill as soon as possible, get it through the Dáil and into action to make sure we protect the farmers who rely on vets and the service they give.

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