John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

Unlike Senator O'Brien, I cannot welcome much of what the Minister said in his presentation today. This is a shocking time for Irish agriculture and Irish farming families. Leaving aside the recent flooding and the credit crisis, which is crippling small businesses, and farms are small businesses, product prices are lower than they were 20 years ago. In several sectors, farmers are receiving prices that are below the cost of production. That is most acute in the dairy sector. It is a time of little hope.

I come from a farming background. We can trace the family back over eight or nine generations and it has always been involved in agriculture. I am the youngest son so I had to find another career to pursue, but both my brothers are involved in farming and I am still the relief milker at home. I have had hands on experience in agriculture and dealing with agricultural issues. I agree with many speakers about the importance of agriculture to the rural economy. It is the backbone of rural Ireland, and it is an indictment of the last 12 prosperous years that so little was done by the Government to diversify the rural economy and that we are still so dependent on agriculture. The Government should hang its head in shame in that regard.

It is also galling that the other source of income in many rural areas was the construction sector, as the Minister of State, Deputy Killeen, will be aware. Many younger people who have left the construction sector were from farming backgrounds and they are now looking to agriculture for their future. However, at the very time they need them, the Government has suspended the schemes designed to attract new entrants into agriculture. It is appalling.

I hope for three principal announcements in the Minister for Finance's Budget Statement today. I concur with Senator Bradford about the carbon tax and the devastating impact it will have on agriculture if it is extended to agricultural diesel. I hope that will not happen and that consideration will be given to this issue. I hope the Minister will introduce some type of conglomerate scheme that includes the early retirement scheme and the installation aid scheme so people are encouraged to transfer farms to younger people who want to get into agriculture, and can do it economically and continue to survive. The early retirement scheme was very useful and was co-financed by the European Union. It did not cost the Exchequer much money and it did a very good job. Now that it has been removed I am aware of many farmers who are in a type of limbo with regard to handing over properties to the next generation. I hope the Minister will include something about that in his Budget Statement.

An announcement is due to be made next week about the replacement for the rural environment protection scheme. It is all very well for Government Senators to state that more is being paid out on REPS this year than in any other year, but in a couple of years nothing will be paid because the scheme will be removed. I hear that the replacement scheme will be a shadow of the original scheme. The REPS money was not saved by the farmer or spent on anything other than investing in their farm and ensuring it complied with the scheme. The money was spent in the local rural economy. That money has now been removed. It is an indictment of the Green Party's role in Government that it has overseen the removal of the rural environment protection scheme. This is an area for which I would have expected it to have great concern, but it has shown scant regard for it in the last 12 months.

With regard to flooding, I hope the Minister will be able to give some type of commitment to a new scheme of river dredging and cleaning. We are giving much needed funds to people who have suffered a great deal from the flooding, be they farmers, rural dwellers or urban dwellers, but unless we spend money on ensuring the flooding does not happen again, we will have to give out more money in the future. It is false economy not to take action to prevent the flooding recurring. Without angling clubs and some landowners over the last 30 or 40 years, no work would have been done on the rivers in this country. It is shocking that, last year, one Department gave permission for a dredging scheme on a tributary of the Shannon while the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government stated that, due to flora and fauna, the scheme could not go ahead. The flood plain in question has been under ten feet of water for the past three weeks, so the flora and fauna are suffering as a result. More joined up thinking is required of the Government when pursuing problems in future.

Electronic sheep tagging has not been mentioned. It has been brought to my attention that the scheme proposed to be implemented in the coming years has been shown to have a 20% failure rate. I question the necessity of introducing this tagging. It will place a burden on already hard-pressed sheep farmers, as the price of sheep meat has gone through the floor.

Will the Minister of State offer assurances that the Government will do something to protect the disadvantaged area scheme? Significant cutbacks to it were announced in recent budgets. It covers not just the west, but many parts of the country, including my constituency. I hope the scheme has a future.

The suckler cow welfare scheme was a good initiative introduced by the Department a few years ago, but it was halved in last year's budget. Actually, it may have been the budget earlier this year. We have had many budgets in the past 18 months. The scheme was halved before it was even introduced. Beef farming faces a particular problem. Many suckler farmers are killing their best breeding stock, which will have a serious knock-on effect in terms of the quality of beef produced in future. The Government must do something urgently to protect breeding stock in the beef sector. The suckler cow welfare scheme was meant to do this, but it has been cut. It should be increased. If something is not done, the quality of product will deteriorate significantly over the next few years. Only when those calves reach 30 months of age or so will we see the knock-on effects.