William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)

I am glad to have an opportunity to say a few words this evening. I completely stand behind the farmers on this one and I am delighted there are so many of them here in the Public Gallery this evening, and rightly so. They are absolutely worn out between being in Newbridge or Naas a while ago and they are here again this evening.

This Mercosur thing is a very bad deal for this country. I am sorry that I am here on my own from Fine Gael but that is neither here nor there. I thank everybody who organised the motion and I have no problem with that either. It is timely and it is very important. We have to push back.

This is the first year for the past 25 or 30 years that I have seen farmers getting a return for beef cattle. We have lost over 200,000 suckler farmers. They are gone because farmers were not making money. That has given us the perilous situation we are in at the moment. Good and very good stock people were forced into dairying in this country and we are going to see worse than that. How can anybody, when we are net contributors to the EU, see what is happening out there and allow this beef to come in? Then we are told that if it suffers more than 10%, we will get a refund. Farmers do not want a refund. They want to get paid for the job that they do. None of them wants to get money in the post. We want to be allowed to produce beef, get a market value for it and just make a week's wages. That is all we want. Unless people like every one of us in the Dáil Chamber oppose this Mercosur deal, we are going to see farmers being wiped out of the beef industry. We will have nothing left in the country. The tillage farmers are on their knees at the moment. I beg the Government to give them money. Now, we will see the beef industry going and there will be nothing left only the dairy industry, and that is not good practice for farming.

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