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

The first thing we need to look at is food security. The first people we need to look to are our farmers, including in tillage, to make sure we have food security. Across the country, we are seeing people who put food on our tables suffer big-time due to the weather. I welcome the scheme the Minister has introduced but it does not go far enough. It puts more pressure on people as they have to travel 75 km to avail of it.

I spoke to a man last week who is the third generation of his family to work on his farm. He said he received a phone call from the Department earlier in the week to say there would be a departmental inspection. He said to me that he told the Department that if its officials came out, they had better have silage or hay with them and, if not, they could go find somebody else in a worse-off position because he would be hanging from the rafters. This person is at his wit's end trying to feed his animals. I know the Department has postponed inspections but the Minister is not going far enough. Last week, straw from out foreign was put on sale in Kilmallock mart. Farmers were glad to have it but last year the Government funded people to put straw back into the ground. Now straw has to be imported.

Last night, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, spoke in the House about the environment. He has closed down beef factories here and now we have to get beef shipped here from across the world. Does the Government not realise that Ireland is only a small pimple in Europe and if there is a problem in Europe, we will be the first to suffer? What is the Government doing? It is putting food out of production to make sure we will not have food on our tables.

The Government also turns to the farming sector when it comes to pollution. The Government's own studies, carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency, found that local government is the biggest polluter in this country. The Government fines farmers and sends out departmental inspectors but it is not inspecting its own infrastructure.

Forty years ago, Fianna Fáil made a promise to a councillor who is retiring next month to provide funding for a sewerage system in Askeaton. He was promised funding 40 years ago and now there is raw sewage going into the Shannon. It did the same at Dromcollogher 15 years ago. I can keep naming places across Limerick, including Hospital and Oolagh, where infrastructure was promised so that people could survive. None of those promises have been kept.

The Government is now talking about a rainy day fund. Why does it not use some of that fund to keep some of the promises it made 40 years ago? The Government continues to make false promises. People trusted the Government to protect them but they no longer do. They do not believe anything that comes out of the Government's mouth because it does not follow through on anything.

That is why Independent Ireland was formed. It is why independents from around the country are joining us. We are putting a team together with our fellow independents to make sure this Government is held to account for the false promises it has made. That is why Independent Ireland has been formed and councillors from around the country are standing up. There are candidates for European and Dáil elections coming together to make sure that Ireland's true voice will be heard and that the real promises the Government failed to keep for 40 years will be carried out.

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