Joe O'Toole (Independent)

Yes, against Fianna Fáil. There was a similar situation earlier tonight when Senator O'Brien had a go at his party colleague, the Minister for Agriculture and Food. I also defended the then Minister, Ivan Yates, against Fine Gael in this House.

It has been a consistent issue for me that farmers were never told the truth by the leadership of Irish society. It was as clear as could be from 1990 onwards that, by the end of the 1990s, farmers would be paid the world price for beef but nobody had the courage to tell them, apart from a few of us who knew relatively little about it. The same position now applies in relation to the WTO, which will have a serious impact on farming in future. Somebody should get down to outlining the implications of that to farmers.

The Fischler proposals are not acceptable but, on the other hand, can anybody convince me that we can continue with a situation where direct payments are not decoupled from production? They will be decoupled and there is one very good reason for that – we have trained a whole generation of farmers to be unproductive, being paid more for producing less.

Incidentally, it is farmers who have briefed me on the situation. They have been paid for putting land into set-aside and various schemes over the last ten years. In every way, they have done things in the opposite way to every previous generation of farmers. Formerly, the more farmers produced, the more they were paid. We have moved away from that situation and we must get back to it. Our farming community also needs to be told that profit is the difference between buying price and selling price. It is not about the final price, but rather the difference between the two prices.