Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Just as an aside at the outset, my good friend Senator Boyhan is actively listening. We have many people who are listening, but not actively listening, so that is good.

I welcome the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, and thank him for personally taking this matter. By coming in here as a senior Minister to take the issue, it is an indication that he is taking it seriously and not attempting to fob it off. This is a very serious matter.

I will try to give some figures because there has to be a factual basis. There is an income crisis in the pig sector in agriculture at the moment. It is a chronic income crisis. It is well known but I wish to give it chapter and verse, if you like. Factory prices, at the moment, are €1.42 per kg deadweight. The production cost is €1.75 deadweight. One can see the bind already. The average loss on a pig is €33. Feedstuff has increased by €120 per tonne. There is every prospect that raw materials will not get cheaper. The average sow unit is 500 sows, and it is currently losing €8,000 per week.There are welfare issues on farms because they are not able to pay for feed. Factories are struggling to clear the backlog of slaughter from Christmas. Northern plants have reduced kill from the South because Covid has taken away workers and some have not returned from abroad, which has resulted in staffing issues. I presume there is also a market issue as the market has contracted.

There are between 8,500 to 9,000 people employed in the pig sector nationally. They are employed in places where jobs cannot be readily replaced. I note the Minister is nodding and he understands this point as a Donegal man. People work in places where we cannot ask the IDA to develop a factory in the morning. This is a very serious matter. The people have to be sustained. There are nearly 2,000 workers in Cavan-Monaghan and the next big centre is Cork. Cavan has a significant concentration of the pig sector, comprising small and large units. There are huge losses pro rata.

There are Brexit loans for SMEs, but there is a slowness in the response from the banks. The Minister had a conference with the banks, but farmers are not getting definite word back. Some farmers refurbished their sheds with cash flow and are not able to show good cash flow from olden times as a result, which creates an issue with banks. The Minister might bear that in mind. Some 10% will not benefit.

I am sure the Minister is aware that the French and Polish have been successful in getting approval from Europe for packages of support for their pig farmers. I have great respect for the Minister, who is very effective. He is meeting pig farmers today in Naas, which is an important meeting. I know enough about politics to know the Minister will not announce everything to me here, but I appeal to him to go to the meeting with options and money for those farmers. They need a support package.

There have been emergency supports for everyone over recent years, which was right in the context of Covid. I now appeal to the Minister to come up to the plate for pig farmers. This is about the jobs of up to 9,000 people and individual families who run large farms in places where people could not get other jobs. These people have done a lot in their local communities. I could go through chapter and verse on that for another ten minutes, but I will finish. This needs an emergency response and people in the sector need hard cash.