Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)

In his statement the Minister, Deputy Smith said it was unfortunate that he missed last week's debate. I imagine he means it was fortunate he missed it because it was a very robust debate on the budget. The Minister's statement says precious little about the budget. He speaks about everything but the budget cutbacks in Irish agriculture, with a few general statements on the budget. He talked about the CAP health check, modulation, a soft landing and simplification, and then moved on to the WTO and climate change. We have statements on agriculture this week, having had this robust debate last week when the budget was the issue of primary concern to farmers. Any Minister negotiating in any external forum, whether the EU or the WTO, has an obligation to do his best for Irish agriculture. That is a given and one expects it. The Minister does not need a clap on the back for that.

No matter how bad things are, one must invest for the future and ensure the sector is efficient. The Minister points out in his speech how important agriculture still is to this economy. He points out that the sector contributes up to 39% of net foreign earning in the primary manufacturing sector, according to the recently published Reardon report. It is still a very important sector and is vital to the incomes in rural areas in general. However the Government must encourage structural changes. The ending of the young farmers installation aid scheme and the early retirement scheme and the cutbacks in the disadvantaged area schemes are false economies. They are detrimental not just to farmers now but to the future and the structure of farming given the age profile of Irish agriculture and the need to encourage to the maximum the transfers of farms into the ownership of young, qualified farmers. The budget is very negative and detrimental to that movement and that constant process of structural adjustment required. Given the IFA's position on the WTO, the Minister adopted a vindictive approach in the budget. It was payback time for the IFA and other farming organisations that created difficulties for the Taoiseach and the Government during the Lisbon referendum. The Government has got its own back on farmers with the measures it has adopted in this budget.

Senator Boyle said we need diversity in Irish agriculture. Our climatic conditions favour two major sectors, dairy and beef. One cannot change the nature of Irish agriculture and the comparative advantage this country has in livestock. Oddly, Senator Boyle talked about farmhouse cheeses in the same breath, perhaps not realising that this comes from the dairy sector. Senator Ó Domhnaill talked about how well farmers have done, as if farmers should be lucky to earn a living from farming. Farming has become very specialised. People work very hard and if they have one good year in prices for their products, that should not be used to justify the type of cutbacks the Minister imposed in this budget.