Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Having congratulated and endorsed the words expressed by Senator Feighan about the great importance of regionalising jobs, I welcome the announcement made by the European Commission, and specifically Commissioner Phil Hogan, that €11.1 million will be targeted at dairy farmers to help them deal with difficult prices at the moment. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to attend the House at the beginning of the next session to debate and discuss, in a detailed manner, how to direct help at the smaller dairy farmers and help them survive the present situation. We must parallel that effort with looking at international markets and seeing where to establish new markets. I do not think that we have fully exploited the Chinese market yet. I talked to people from Taiwan the other day who also have tremendous potential to accept more product from us, and the same applies to a number of countries.

We must examine the whole market in question in order to overcome the problem in commodity pricing in the dairy sector. The problem affects a lot of dairy farmers in Cavan, Monaghan and throughout the country. The pricing problem will spread to the beef sector shortly. All of which makes this is a very serious problem. I appreciate the Cathaoirleach's indulgence. I wish to say to the Leader that I would like to know that we will act on the agricultural pricing crisis shortly.