Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully support Deputy McNamara's amendment. I wish to talk about a situation in which there are a lot of issues with agriculture and the problems out there. I have just left the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, where we have been discussing the price of fertiliser all evening. It is shocking where farmers found themselves last year, with many of them going bust trying to purchase fertiliser at an extraordinary price. We looked at the reports telling us that it was not just because of the war in Ukraine that this happened because the price was on the way up in 2021. I asked the farm organisations a question and there was not one with a dissenting voice. They felt the Minister did not intervene. He should have intervened. Why did the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission not intervene? We are paying an astronomical amount of money in the difference in the purchase of fertiliser in Ireland in comparison with the UK. Then, from one province to another and one county to another, there are huge price differences also. In my constituency, Cork South-West, many farmers are angered with me that I was not able to put up the fight to force someone to make some change, with farmers at that time paying maybe €300 extra for a pallet of urea. It is an astonishing situation.

Farmers need to survive. The way the Government is going, it is treating farmers as if it wants them to be all working with a donkey and cart and spreading a bit of dung at the back, something that happened in 1940 and 1950. We are not going back to that. If we do, we will only open this to the Brazilian market. They would be delighted with the Government's squeezing of Irish agriculture, and squeezing it is.

I was in Farnanes, which is a good bit outside of my constituency, last Friday week after an invitation by the farm organisations to stand on the farm of a dairy farmer with 71 cows, a nice, modest farm. That man faces ruination if the Government is going to continue ploughing ahead with the nitrates directive. The Government needs to get up and say, "No. We are not going to do this. We are going to try to force change here." That man, besides many more farmers who attended that day, including a Government MEP and Deputy Aindrias Moynihan, knows - I certainly know - that there is a massive crisis here and we will have a massive issue with food supply if the Government continues with this. The Minister needs to make a statement today that he will not force farmers to do this. The target of 250 kg is non-achievable. They know that and the Minister knows that, but he will plough ahead. This gentleman is married with four or five lovely kids around the farm. He has 71 cows. He will drop to 50-something cows, he says, if this goes ahead. He said he will be non-viable, so he will be gone off the farm, unless he can purchase or rent land that surrounds him, and that will drive up the price of land for the ordinary suckler farmer who has a bit of land rented. The ordinary, smaller farmers will be absolutely wiped out.

The Minister has two situations if he is not going to step in and realise that a reduction from 250 kg to 220 kg is non-achievable. If he is not going to step in here, he will leave people in a desperate situation in which many dairy farmers will not be able to afford to purchase or rent grounds neighbouring them. If they do, they will pass it on in the price to the person who was renting it already. It is a very unfair situation. The one phrase that was used in the yard by many of the farmers in Farnanes was "We are being treated like environmental terrorists". That is what the farmers are saying, not Michael Collins. That is an astonishing situation in which Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have left Irish agriculture, to think that the dairy farmer and the suckler farmer feel like environmental terrorists. They are among the best in the world. That is the saddest point we are trying to make here. They are the greenest and the purest in the world and they are being treated terribly.

If any political party or politician worth their salt comes in here and does not state that the nitrates directive targets the Government is seeking to reach are non-achievable, they are not worth one vote in rural Ireland - not one. That, I assure the Minister, will be remembered. The farmers were naming Deputies in that yard and the yard was full of farmers. They were naming who is with them and who is not with them, so watch it, lads. I am giving ye a bit of advice: be careful out there. The Government cannot have a farmer with 71 cows going out of business. It just cannot do that. If that is the case, many genuine, hard-working farmers will be wiped out. They are so frustrated to have the finger pointed at them the whole time. In any discussion in here, the farmer is the problem, agriculture is the problem, rural Ireland is the problem. We will find the solution in rural Ireland and in agriculture, but the Government will not. As I said, the price difference in respect of fertiliser between the UK and Ireland is astonishing, but it is also from county to county and that needs to be investigated. I pleaded with the committee this evening that an investigation needs to be carried out here.

There is also the situation with the sheep compensation that was asked for. Unfortunately, sheep farmers found themselves in a desperate struggle for survival. I have met with Donal O'Donovan of the IFA often and Dermot Kelleher of the ICSA. They are people who know what is going on in their own areas and their own farming situations. My son is running the suckler farm now. It is an organic farm, and that is fine. That suits where we live because there is a lot of rough ground and that suits the farming we do down there, but that type of farming does not suit everybody. I have super dairy farmers living near me. They are tremendous. I would not begrudge them one acre of their ground for the work they do. I spoke to a lady this evening from Rosscarbery. She knew I could not give a solution to the issue she had. She said to me that her son, who is married with two children, hardly sees the kids or the wife these days. He is out every night because of cows calving. She said he is - pardon the expression - working his butt off by day. She asked what the outcome will be. They are under immense stress - there is absolute stress going on here - and we condemn them the whole time here instead of supporting them and making sure they are going to survive. We need to fight for them. That is what the Minister was put here to do. I plead with him to do that, to look at the nitrates issue and to come out and make a brave statement that will give the farmers breathing space to survive.

See this speech in context