Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Contrary to what people perhaps believe, there is a significant number of farmers in the Dáil constituency which I unsuccessfully contested in June and they were not rallying to my support. Apart from that, as I think the Minister knows, I have long had an interest in the CAP and in the dilemma of developing a way of sustaining life in agriculture and related activities and sustaining life in rural areas, while not creating the sort of monster that the Common Agriculture Policy was threatening to become when Commissioner MacSharry began the process of rethinking it.

I was interested in the Minister's speech. I remember Seamus Mallon once calling the Good Friday Agreement "Sunningdale for slow learners". I have a feeling that the process of re-evaluating the CAP has a similar element. When one hears the sort of figures that the Minister quoted – that in the last four years we still accounted for between 27% and 35% of butter in intervention, though we only have an 8% share of production – one sees that there seems to be some slow learning in that sector. Farmers are slow learners if they do not realise that there is no future in intervention, for it can be short or medium-term but in the long term an industry cannot be so focused on intervention. The case is similar when the Minister quotes the figures for our reliance on bulk commodities in comparison with such countries as Denmark and the Netherlands. In any attempt to analyse the outcome of these or other CAP negotiations it is worthwhile asking the reason our agriculture and food sector seems to learn so slowly the lesson that others seem to have learned and grasped, though they were involved before us, that there must be a fundamental reappraisal.

Let us be very realistic. No one seems to be sure any more how many farmers there are in the country but I estimate their number at around 100,000. There are at least 3.5 million consumers, excluding farmers entirely, though they are consumers, too. To a degree, tails have been wagging dogs here for a long time. I repeat that I have absolutely no objection – quite the opposite – to creative interventions using redistributive, taxation based measures to sustain a dignified, worthwhile life for the maximum number in rural Ireland. This country is becoming dangerously over-urbanised without planning or thought, and we are in danger of turning our capital city into a fairly horrible place to live. One of our proper social objectives should be to reduce both the tendency and the necessity to move out of rural areas into urban ones.