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

I am disappointed and incredibly surprised that the Minister and Minister of State have spent the guts of 20 minutes outlining that there are no new supports to be provided. When I raised this issue as a priority oral question at the beginning of March, the response stated that the Minister had directed officials in the Department to examine potential supports. So big was that as an announcement by the Minister that he gave the same information in response to theIrish Farmer's Journal the day before the questions were to be answered. Here we are at the end of the month after being told at the beginning that officials had been directed to examine potential supports. What are officials being directed to do now, as per the Minister's opening statement? They are now being asked to continue to closely monitor developments. We are further away from what sheep farmers need, which is direct new supports, than we were a month ago.

Sheep farmers, like those in many sectors, have weathered an unprecedented confluence of challenges over the past couple of years. We have had the pandemic, Brexit, the utter collapse in wool prices and the input cost rises that have been well spoken about. The truth is that the more than 40,000 sheep farmers in this State are under incredible pressure. The Minister recognised the good work and hard work of sheep farmers but we also have to recognise the crucial economic difference these farmers make in delivering more than €476 million in exports alone. They are driving economic activity in parts of the country that otherwise would not see it. They are doing this against the backdrop of Governments that have not acted accordingly to provide the support they need.

One of the arguments often lost in the debate is just how important and crucial the sheep farmers are to our sustainability goals. As it stands, the majority of sheep farmers are very close to being organic farmers. The reason farmers do not move towards converting, as the Minster is encouraging them to do, is that there is no market yet for organic sheep product, at the level that would be required to encourage farmers to go into that sector knowing there would be a financial benefit for them in doing so. That is because the Minister has continuously failed to act on Sinn Féin's call for Bord Bia to have a ring-fenced budget for organic produce. It is simply not good enough to continuously say the Government has no role in the market; that the agrifood regulator, for example, should have no role in competition; or that the sheep sector cannot meet the high test, as described by the Minister, required for European supports.

Farmers understand that economic viability and that the swings of the market can have impacts better than anybody. That is why sheep farmers always set money aside during good times to carry them through to the bad times. They try to match and prepare for the economic cycle in particular sectors and invest when the opportunity arises. However, they cannot take punch after punch without assistance from Government. Just as farmers put money aside in good times to prepare for the bad, Governments must also invest to foster an agrifood system that has in-built resilience to help support it absorb the blows during more economically challenging times. The truth and the problem is that the Minister has not invested sufficiently in our sheep farmers. The sheep welfare scheme, which provides an additional €12 per eligible ewe, does not even cover the level of inflation that has been faced by farmers. What is required is a scheme to the tune of €20 per ewe, such as that which Sinn Féin has advocated.

As has been noted, wool prices have been falling through the floor for years. Reports have suggested that farmers are willing to give their wool away because the price they have been receiving does not even cover the cost of a sheer. This was once a very valuable commodity from which farmers derived an income. That is an income that has been taken away from them. Wool is now considered - unbelievably - to be virtually a waste product; something to be disposed of. This does not have to be the case. As the Minister will know, Sinn Féin proposed an emergency package for the wool sector to cover the cost of sheering. Unfortunately, Government kept responding that there was a wool feasibility study emerging and said that no assistance would be provided in the meantime. When that study was published, rather than answers to the questions that were put, what we got were the questions being repeated. All the while farmers have been left to carry the can, wondering if their enterprises and farms can remain viable and certainly wondering whether they will be in a position to pass it on to the next generation. I note the Minister references the recommendation in regard to a wool council. He said that one of the main recommendations concerned the establishment of an industry-led wool council. To clarify, the recommendation was for the establishment of an all-Ireland wool council. Again, considering some of the discussions we had last night, it is interesting he dropped the reference to all-Ireland. This may be something that can be clarified in his closing remarks.

In terms of prices, and this goes to the crux of the problem, our sheep farmers suffer the consequences of unchecked, often cartel-like practices in the meat processing industry. The Minister brought forward a Bill on an agrifood regulator. The heads of Bill were clearly not fit for purpose, a view that was shared by the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. To his credit, the Minister has accepted many of the recommendations from that committee, along with some of the amendments we put forward on Committee Stage. There still remains a particular chasm between the approach of Government and the approach required. If the regulator is a position to make a different to sheep farmers and other vulnerable sectors, it has to be able to address anti-competitive practices that might not fit into the narrow definition of an unfair trading practice, but which are crucial to the operation of meat processors and the fact that vulnerable and important sectors regularly operate at below cost.

I was astounded the Minister managed to make an opening address without referencing Brexit at all. Few sectors are as exposed to the consequences of Brexit as the red meat sector. British trade deals with New Zealand and Australia pose a significant threat and will only be compounded if the EU proceeds to sign its own deals without having protections in place. Yet Ireland was one of the few countries that had the potential for dedicated supports to offset the worse impacts of Brexit. It was due to the stories of, and the potential impacts on, our peripheral farmers, particularly those in the west and in Border regions, and the implications of Brexit, that ensured the European Union established a Brexit Adjustment Reserve fund. It was the stories of those farmers and the communities from which they came that ensured Ireland got the bulk of that funding to the tune of €1 billion. Yet virtually no money has gone directly to those very people who secured the funding in the first place; in fact, the Minister has apparently signed off on siphoning money from the Brexit Adjustment Reserve fund into other funds. When asked, the Minister retorts with the complications and the frustrating bureaucracy involved with deriving money from the Brexit Adjustment Reserve fund and giving it directly to farmers. However, there was no difficulty in taking the first €100 million of that money and providing it to meat and food processors. They got a fair share but farmers have not. The existing impact of Brexit is cited when we talk about sheep farmers but it was not mentioned when we were talking about the processors. In that instance, there was talk of investment being used to pay dividends in the years ahead, and that is precisely what our sheep farmers are looking for.

Our sheep farmers are under enormous stress and little fluctuations in the price will not address that. What they want is direct support through a welfare scheme, as Sinn Féin has advocated for in successive budget submissions, and we need Government to intervene. We need a strong intervention, both domestically and at a European level, to ensure the Brexit Adjustment Reserve fund is used to support the people it was established to support in the first place.

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