Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk here tonight on behalf of the motion. I welcome all of the farmers here from around the country. I see people here who were at an IFA meeting in Kilgarvan last night, would you believe? They are up here and they are very welcome.

All I have is my word and this Government promised me, going back to the start of the year, that it would be against Mercosur. This was one of the four things that I asked. All I have is my word and that is what it said to me, that it was against Mercosur. I would like the Minister to have been stronger here tonight when he was talking about it. I am only hoping, and I am depending on the Government to reject it because it is not fair. We are all under the one sky. They are doing what they are doing down in South America and if they can export beef in here against Irish farmers, that is not right and I will not stand for it any day of the week.

I am a farmer and have been for the past 40 or 50 years. My three sons are farming. I am still farming myself. I depend on farmers. A big part of the vote I got in County Kerry was from the farming organisations along with a lot of others. I really depend on the farmers. I look up to them. I know what they go through in the middle of the night when they are trying to calve a cow. I know what is involved day to day. When you beat everything else, you still have to contend with the weather. I know what each and every one of them goes through because I went through it myself, as did my father and all belonging to me.

We are depending on this Government and the Minister and Ministers of State for agriculture to get out there and make bloody sure that we are not accepting Mercosur. I know what it means. I know what it will mean to the farmers. As well, there is a problem with our poultry at the present time. Someone can export turkey or chicken in here. That is not fair. That is not what we were told at the very beginning.

I am very disappointed with the MEPs we elected in Europe. They have not been standing up to the European Parliament in this fight about Mercosur.

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