Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I rise today to talk about the impact of the recent weather on the farming community. I ask that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine would come to the House to discuss what emergency plan he has put in place, in particular to deal with the fodder crisis, which has been ongoing for some months but because of the weather we have had in the past week the crisis has escalated and it needs an immediate response. The Minister must look north of the Border to examine the funds that were put in place there when farmers experienced hardship. The crisis is not confined to fodder. Sheds have collapsed and people have had to destroy milk. An emergency package must be put in place for farm families which form the backbone of many rural communities.

I also wish to speak about yesterday's meeting of the finance committee which was attended by Commissioner Oettinger who spoke about the EU budget. He told us about the proposed reduction in Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, funding to meet the €5 billion gap that will be created following Brexit. The Commissioner said he has travelled around many member states and the people to whom he has spoken have referred to reductions of up to 30% in the CAP budget. That is absolutely unacceptable. The Commission must look beyond CAP in terms of the gap that will be left by Brexit. It can look, for instance, at reducing the EU militarisation programme. The average income of a farmer in the west of Ireland is perhaps a little more than €3,000 a year and it is not acceptable to expect his direct payments to be reduced while increasing the budget for EU militarisation. That is not what the EU talks about in terms of incorporating the views of all member states and being all-inclusive in its approach. We must stand up for agriculture and agricultural families in this country and for the role they play in rural areas. In terms of food security, we will not know how valuable farmers really are until they are gone. Too many family farms have been destroyed because of Government policies and due to inaction by the EU. We have an opportunity to address that during the CAP review. Currently, 80% of CAP payments are directed to 20% of the highest earners in agriculture and that wrong must be righted in the CAP review as well.