Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

"In bed" is a metaphor. We have not got a bed here. If we had, the Government would be asleep in it all day and would not get up to see the farmers. The farmers get up early in the morning and get up late at night to tend to their animals when they are young, sick or being attacked by marauding gangs of foxes and deer. We cannot have a cull of the deer population which is running riot around the country. It is causing havoc in every rural area and in urban areas as well. There is danger to life and limb due to car accidents and cars are being destroyed. The Government will not address that at all because of the do-gooders, all these so-called environmentalists who want to lecture us and tell us we are backward, stupid, dirty or somehow not up to it. We are up to it and the farmers of Ireland are well up to it. The Government should just leave them alone and not strangle them with all the red tape and schemes.

The Department is not fit for purpose. We have word now from Europe that it will not provide further funding for TB eradication. That is going on for decades and billions have been spent on it, but a bloody racket is all it is, money for the boys. It has not even been sorted, as TB was never as bad, and yet the Department will not even trace the badgers to see whether they are causing it, nor will it check whether the deer are carrying it or spreading it. It has become an industry.

I have been contacted by pedigree cattle breeders from across the country who tell me they are being blackguarded by the pedigree cattle breeding societies. They are being forced to cull their four- and five-star pedigree breeding animals as regular ones. This has been going on for more than 30 years, since the late Owen O'Neill took a case against the Irish Hereford Breed Society Limited. These societies still hold kangaroo courts to force their members. I have been contacted by Joe Casserly, a pedigree Charolais breeder from Longford, who was forced to sell his cattle and to cull them, and the Department is in on this and knows all about this. I have been contacted by Anne Pounds, a pedigree Hereford breeder from Cork, who told me she has been subjected to a similar fate after raising the issue of governance and auditing practices in the Irish Hereford Breed Society Limited. The society refused to issue certificates for her Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, ICBF-certified pedigree animals and she has been forced to cull her four- and five-star cattle as well. What is going on? We have a cull already and there people are trying to push these breeders out. Is this any surprise, because some people in these societies are very closely connected to a female Cabinet Minister who sits beside the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, every day at Cabinet? Put that in your pipe and smoke it and try to defend what is going on.

This is the blackguarding of farmers. That is only one lot of farmers. Every other farmer, be he or she in cattle, sheep or pigs, is getting blackguarded and tied up in red tape. All we want is the truth. RTÉ was praising itself for the truth in the news, but my goodness look at it now, nakedly exposed. The Government will be nakedly exposed. The game is up for the cabals. It is about the good people of Ireland. We are talking about the farmer, who I am proud to represent.

I take no lectures from Deputies on the left who say we do not know what we are talking about. They should come down and see what we are talking about. We have never backed the cabals and the beef barons. We are fighting all the time for fairness and equality for the producers. We are trying all the time to get the fifth quarter and I salute the likes of Seamus Maye, who has done an investigation on this. However, the Government does not want to know because it has a culture of Secretaries General and Departments protecting the system and advancing the big players against the ordinary people. Men like Liam Lynch, Michael Collins, Dan Breen and many others fought and gave their lives for democracy but this Government has besmirched the name of democracy with the way it is treating people.

It is now demonising rural people. This morning the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, was reporting again about septic tanks. Big Phil tried the terrorism there and we are back to it again. The Government will not ask the EPA to check the councils responsible for Dublin Bay. Two farmers recently went out on a boat and they could see the sludge going into the bay on a lovely morning. All the rivers and streams are being polluted by municipal authorities. I do not support anyone, be they a farmer or anybody else, who pollutes. Nobody does it deliberately, but Government is constantly doing it deliberately because it will not fund people to repair the infrastructure or do anything else save go after the daoine beaga and threaten them with a €5,000 fine. We are told people can get a grant to do up their septic tank. We went down that road long ago but the grants are not there and the money is not there. It is not sufficient at €5,000. I know a bit about this as I have installed many septic tanks. It is costly and expensive. We want to mind our environment. All rural dwellers want to mind the environment, not just the farmers. The farmers and the rural communities are in unison. However, we want to have food to eat, jobs, futures and education for our children.

Who is going to pay for it? Who is going to feed us? In his first five minutes or so, the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, rattled off all the schemes and said how happy the farmers were. If so, why did Macra na Feirme march 70 km here for its 70 years in existence? Its members came here to tell the Government they are worried they cannot live, cannot work, cannot play and cannot get educated in rural Ireland. Above all, they cannot farm. It is that noble profession that puts food on our tables, including on the tables of the restaurant in Leinster House, and in every other house. It could be bacon, lamb, beef, cereals and everything else and we are going to destroy them. The Minister has gone down this road at the behest of the Green Party and a willing media.

I am not a climate-change denier, but there is no evidence and the Government will not listen to anyone else who has different evidence. We had people here recently from Teagasc, people formerly of Met Éireann and people from other prestigious institutions who have an alternative view. They were not listened to. They were demonised. The Government has played a phony trick again by accepting this motion, but the Minister and Minister of State did not even read it because they spoke as if they were speaking to another motion. This is a charade. If it looks like a charade and walks like a charade it is a charade.

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