Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to conclude the debate. I thank Members across the House who have supported the motion. While I thank the Minister of State for his response, to say I am disappointed would be an understatement. In his statement, he rehashed the actions which have been taken by Government since last September. In essence, that is why we are here today. There is no mention in the statement of any future planning. While the Minister of State acknowledged that we can meet Food Harvest 2025 if there is correct planning, on which I agree with him, what planning is there? The Minister of State and the line Minister, Deputy Creed, are the go-to people in agriculture. It is their baby. It is the Department’s baby and they are at its head. All they say here, however, is that they acknowledge what has been done without acknowledging that it is what has been done since September that has got us to where we are. There is no indication or mention of acceptance of any of the proposals in our motion or of any other suggestion of their own to help people to get over this.

There is no future in history. I am a farmer myself and I remember the bad winters to which the Minister of State referred. While we got over 1973, 1985 and 1986, the resilience of farmers has been worn very thin at this stage and we are very close to a breaking point, if not at it, for many. It is bad form if the best answer of a Minister of State in a situation of crisis is to quote the resilience of farmers to say they will get through it. As I said at the committee, the Minister of State and the Minister are waiting for Joanna Donnelly and Jean Byrne to announce at 9.30 p.m. some night on RTÉ 1 that the crisis is over. That is what will happen. The weather will get us out of the crisis, but it will not get us beyond this and it will not form the plans for avoidance of the same situation into the future, not least into the winter of 2019, which we are already at the start of on the basis of the reasons I quoted in my opening address. We need leadership, but it is not forthcoming.

As has been said here, the farming community and farm enterprises in rural Ireland are its economic backbone. When farmers have no cash flow or money to spend, SMEs, shops and high streets in small towns and villages suffer. Given the situation in which the farming community finds itself, farmers do not have a red cent to spend on food for hungry animals and, in the circumstances, they are not going to be going to town. Everybody in the community suffers as a result. Nevertheless, the Minister of State provided no solution or plan for the future in his address. He provided no clue as to how we are going to help these people overcome the situation in which they find themselves to build for the future and avoid the same happening again. We are fire-fighting because we allowed ourselves to get into this situation. Prevention is far better than cure and I hoped the Minister of State would, if he was not accepting our motion, provide some answers as to what we can do to avoid getting into this situation again.

There is no future in history and while there is no future in blaming people for something which happened in the past, lessons must be learned going forward. We were here in 2013 too but, apparently, we learned nothing. From the Minister of State's response today, it looks like we have not learned anything from 2017-18 either.