Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that it does need to be targeted. That is something the sector itself believes. I am not letting the Minister off. He plied his trade going around the marts throughout the country. I was at one of them. If I had been a farmer, I would not have attended another one. The Minister has not been challenged in the media because his message is now so efficient from how he learned to get it off by heart. We are an agricultural economy, and I can tell the Minister the farmers no longer feel supported by Government. It is plain to see. Every time I go to a meeting, I am asked what the Minister and this Government has sold us out in Europe for, and if it will be ten years down the line before we learn. Nobody in their right mind would do what the Government is doing to farming. The Minister of State, Senator Hackett, quoted figures on the Department meeting targets on forestry licences. It has not met one of the targets - not one. I have the file to prove it. The Minister of State said the Department was way ahead of the targets and had met all the requirements. It has not. It is spin, and it continues to be spin, while the Government is absolutely denigrating the whole agricultural sector. The Minister says he wants tillage and the policy is to improve tillage. He is selling out our dairy herd. They are leasing land at double the price they should be, which is decimating the tillage sector. What part of that does the Minister, as an intelligent man, not understand?

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