Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support Deputy McNamara's amendment because it is of crucial importance. We have seen legislation implemented in this regard in Spain in recent years. We have seen the same with the capping of the fuel, with fuel prices, and with many other issues where other countries have done something and we are running amok. I do not know how the famous meeting went today with the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, and all the big retail chains. I hope it went well.

Considering what is going on and what has gone on, a change has been undertaken in rural Ireland since the time I was a buachaill óg, which is not 100 years ago but it might be 50 years ago. We grew 40 acres of potatoes at home. We grew carrots, turnips, parsnips and everything else. We brought them to the marketplace and they were sold. Even today, there are wonderful farmers' markets in Cahir and Clonmel and other places of a Saturday morning. One will see the housewife or the house-husband or whoever, looking for the clay on the parsnips because these are healthy, wholesome and fresh.

To demonstrate below-cost selling, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae and I, along with representatives from the Irish Farmers Association, IFA, went down trasna an gheata, trasna an bhóthair agus trasna na sráide to a big supermarket off Grafton Street and we got three trolleys. We filled them to the water level with the finest of vegetables. There was no clay on those vegetables obviously. The cost of what was in each trolley was only €18, if I remember correctly.

We came out on the street to give them away. That was the impact it was having at the time on God knows how many people. North County Dublin includes a rich area that is good for horticulture, including potato growing and so on. I cannot remember the name of it now, but it is a wonderful area for early spuds and, indeed, all the vegetables. Ring and Dungarvan in County Waterford always got the first of the early potatoes but we will not have them. Producers are under enormous pressure.

On below-cost selling, as Deputy McNamara said, the situation with milk and butter in recent times is nothing short of a disgrace. Ministers in this Government and preceding Governments, including the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Coveney, when he was Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, advised young people to increase the number of cows they own. Teagasc, which farmers depend on for the gospel according to it, advised them to expand into milk. Deputy McNamara mentioned that milk production in Paris costs hundreds of thousands of euro. I will declare that I was involved in doing some excavation work, including underpasses and everything else, but young farmers spent €1 million-----

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