Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also tabled a question on this matter.

Galway Wool was set up by Ms Blatnaid Gallagher. That is an example of where there is huge potential in wool. As Deputy McNamara said, it is not so much that wool is almost useless at the moment, it is worse than useless because it costs more to shear a sheep than the price one gets for the wool. Back in the day, wool was a big source of income for a small family farm in the west of Ireland.

I applaud the fact that wool council is there but we need to create a sense of urgency. Even in the interim, with the way the sheep sector is going, there should be some support towards the cost of sheep shearing for farmers, particularly the way the input costs are. We spoke earlier about sheep farmers and their viability. It is important that we would do that. The Minister of State has my full support in respect of this matter.

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