Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

I compliment the Social Democrats on this very important motion. I do not know whether it will fall on deaf ears but I fear it will, like so many other motions that have gone before. I remember when Deputy Danny Healy-Rae's brother, now Minister of State, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae, and I, along with a small number of IFA activists, worried vegetable and fruit producers, went to some supermarkets here in Dublin. Three trolleys filled up to water level cost less than €12 each. That was unsustainable then and it is more unsustainable now to have food priced at that level. I come from a mixed farm that grew everything. I still grow everything and my brother grows a lot of potatoes. We have every kind of vegetable. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae said it is lovely to see the colour of the corn. The combines have been working since last Thursday in south Tipperary. I visited some of them. It is wonderful to see the harvest. Thanks be to God the weather is so wonderful. However, farmers are being intimidated. They are being killed every which way between the costs of everything for inputs and the price going down. In fairness, cattle, sheep and pigmeat are doing very well this year but that is going to have its own implications. Food security is much threatened going forward. Solar farms are taking over the best of the land in south Tipperary.

As regards the regulators, when I came in here 18 years ago we had a limited number of regulators but now they are like mushrooms in a field of a soft wet morning. There are mushrooms everywhere. There is a regulator for everything and the vast majority of them are useless, toothless and fruitless. They have their office, their title and the plaque on the wall. They have the fancy office desk and a team of employees paid for by the taxpayers. It is the same with the NGOs, hundreds and hundreds of them. The public, and in this case the farmers, are being milked high and dry, pardon the expression. As I said, the regulators are useless, toothless and fruitless. It is so sad. We have the regulators and they have powers but they are totally ineffective. Governments are feeble and inept at insisting and instructing regulators to do their jobs, to do what hard-earned taxpayers' money is paying for them to do. Across all the areas, they are not doing it. The cost of insurance is again an issue at the moment. Various moves were made to bring down the price of insurance but to no avail.

In the food sector, it is so important for families to have good and proper fresh food. It is important for nutrition, as Deputy Toole said. There is nothing like carrots, potatoes, turnips or cabbage fresh out of the fields, with clay on them. Now they are imported from all over the world. There are concerns at the moment about some fruits being imported from Israel. We should support our farmers but, above all, insist that the regulators employed to do a job, do the job. Last night, I talked about the Custom House. What has gone wrong with us here in this Republic that people are paid handsomely to do a job but they are not doing it? We are all in hock to the big conglomerates. Governments are in fear of them, probably in hock to them, and everybody else is as well. Big is wonderful. We will know the cost when all the small producers are gone. They are going. Like snow on a ditch they are disappearing because farming is not viable and they cannot survive. I support the motion and I appeal to the Ministers of State present to ask the regulators to do their jobs.

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