Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are all aware that the sheep sector has been in crisis for many years. This does not come as a surprise. Sheep farmers, mainly those in mountainous areas and with poorer land, much of it in the west, including in my constituency, are finding it very difficult to manage and have been for quite some time.

The sheep welfare payment in place is not adequate to deal with the situation. When the then Minister, Deputy Creed, introduced it, he made a great fanfare about the fact that to implement a welfare programme like that, various measures had to be put in place around animal husbandry, environmental improvements, etc. In order to make the payments, those were part of the rules put in place. I felt from the outset that those rules were too stringent and went too far because they did not facilitate the possibility of any expansion. How could we increase the money if we set the rules so tight from the start? That has been one of the difficulties. The level of payment is far too low to sustain the industry. We all recognise that.

The Minister had a review into the situation, but that has not come up with anything. The €2 increase is paltry; it is not nearly enough. It needs to increase to at least the €20 we proposed in the past. The sheep sector needs more support outside of that. It strikes me, as in all sectors of farming, that the person taking all the risks, getting up at night to look at the animals, nursing them and putting in all the work, gets the least profit at the end of the day. That is one of the major inequities in all aspects of farming, particularly livestock farming.

I speak to many farmers who, particularly at this time of year when ewes are lambing all over the country, are up at night trying to manage and bringing lambs into their kitchen with bottles and all that when a ewe passes on. That still happens for many families. The nurturing nature it creates on the family farm, particularly for children, stands to people as they advance in years, but it does not provide for much when they cannot get an adequate price for the product. That is the bottom line.

The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association at recent meetings talked about the price needing to be over €8 per kilo to provide a sustainable income for farmers. We have a problem in this country and it goes back to a situation we have spoken about for many years. It relates to ensuring we have adequate oversight of the factories doing the processing and buying in the animals and of the supermarkets, to ensure the primary producer and the consumer get fair play. It is my view, and, I think, that of most people, that those two ends of it get the raw deal. We see the price of the product increasing for the consumer, yet the primary producer gets very little of that higher price. That needs to change and can only change with proper regulation. The proposals put in place to do that have not delivered, and that needs to be re-examined.

The other by-product of sheep farming mentioned by previous speakers is wool. We are in a terrible scenario whereby wool is being produced in Ireland and most of it is being dumped or bought at very low prices. For many decades it was exported to China and came back as fabric to other parts of the world. There needs to be a handle got on all of that. I encourage the Minister to ensure we find a proper outlet for that valuable product which has been for too long something farmers have not got any payment for. The key is ensuring that farmers get a proper price when they go to market. That needs to be at least above €8 per kilo. There needs to be a way of ensuring that happens through proper regulation around that and around the support scheme that is in place, which at present is far too low. I encourage the Minister to review that.

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