Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have here some captions from my Auntie Eileen's day-to-day diary from 1936. One of the captions said that P. had gone to the creamery - P. was my father - that Ned Barry had called with the paper, that she and Kathy were reading the paper and that Ned Barry had gone out to help in the yard. I am very involved in vintage circles. Recently, I was taking stuff out of a loft. There was a horse-drawn machine and other machinery that people used in farming many years ago, including machinery for the drainage of lands. They broke their backs without machinery to drain land, following the advice of Government as to how to stock their land.

I was at the housing committee a minute ago, dealing with the Planning and Development Bill, and heard Deputy Whitmore on the television saying that she found it very hard to listen to the Opposition because she had been studying this area since she was 18 years of age. She said she found it very hard to listen to Independents or to Sinn Féin. She should try digging a drain across a field to try to get the water off of it. That is very hard. Studying something all of your life and living something all of your life are two different things. I find it very hard to listen to people like that when they have no experience of what it means in real life.

Year after year and decade after decade, we have listened to Governments telling us how to farm and stock the land according to regulations. In 2011, Deputy Simon Coveney told people in this country to invest in milk, white gold, and to build their stocks because that is what the market wants. In 2023, the Government was saying it wanted to reduce the herd. This is what is happening. Every time there is a change of government, there is a change of policy. Every time the Green Party get into government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael run with it and penalise the farmers who they told to go in one direction and who they will tell tomorrow to go in another. What about the future of food security in Ireland?

Under the slurry Act, farmers are not allowed to spread slurry at certain times of the year. Biodigesters were then brought to the attention of the Government. Deputy Eamon Ryan will not listen to talk about biodigesters. Why? All of the slurry that comes off the farms, all the chicken litter that comes off land and all the grass that comes off land that does not have any animals on it can be used to produce power, but the Minister will not listen. It would mean that we would not have to cull any animals in this country. Again, the science is there. The Government will not listen to science but goes ahead with different things that punish farmers who are trying to put food on the Minister of State's table. Advice from different governments has told them to go one way only to tell them to go the other way the day after. There is no future in farming in this country while we have governments that change regulations at every turn.

In the vote that was taken, 329 voted for and 275 voted against. Every MEP we sent out of there, bar two, voted for this. Two voted against but those two, the Sinn Féin representative, Chris MacManus, and 'Ming' Flanagan, have been voting for it all along. Come the last vote, they changed their votes because they thought it would not be popular to vote for it. They are not the people we want out there representing Ireland.

We want real people involved. When the European Union elections come around, in light of the Fianna Fáil and the Fine Gael candidates that are running, every farmer should look up and see that they have been sold out by their own. There will be independent candidates running in the EU elections who would represent people a great deal better than the parties that put them in this hole in the first place. Now they are being led by the Green Party and every decision they make has been led by that. However, the Green Party does not listen to science. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are as guilty as the Green Party. Remember that Independent Ireland will have candidates running in the European elections. I ask farmers to make sure they do not vote for the same people who have destroyed their future.

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