Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Deputy Leader to have an urgent debate in this House, because the beef industry in this country is in crisis. At the moment, it takes four to six weeks for farmers to get animals into factories at what is a very depressed price. On the best advice they had received about Food Harvest 2020, farmers, especially dairy farmers, were asked to produce bull beef. Around 1.5 million animals are to be slaughtered this year in Ireland, which is around 30,000 animals per week. Factories are not able to cope with those numbers as we do not have the markets. Unfortunately, over the next four years, we are going to see a rise of 300,000 cattle to be slaughtered, even though we do not have the markets. We have seen the headlines about new markets in Libya, Lebanon and Japan, as well as the Gulf states re-opening for Irish beef, but what are Bord Bia or the factories doing? They do not seem to be sourcing these markets that are now open to us.

We have a crisis. Farmers are not going to stay in beef production at the current price, so we need to have an urgent debate in this House and I ask that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine attend. I also ask that the Minister immediately bring the farm organisations and the factories together to see how this issue can be resolved.

Given the present weather conditions of storms and rain we may be facing a crisis in farming, as we had last year, of a very wet spring. As animals are still in sheds and unable to move to factories, it is important that the markets we have been promised are reopened immediately, especially for live exports. We have live exports but we do not have the markets. I call for an urgent debate on the beef industry.