Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I will speak to the section and about my serious concerns regarding this industry. It is very important. I am a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. We invited representatives of the three fur farms to come before the committee. They laid their stall out and made a very good argument. I was personally a little hard on them, which some of them confirmed today. One thing I was not too hard about was the issue of animal welfare. I welcome the end of mink farming for a whole range of reasons. I also accept it is Government policy. The coalition parties signed off on the scrapping of this industry as part of the programme for Government. The manner in which it was to be scrapped was not signed off by members of the Government, to be fair to them. The Leader is right. I acknowledge she has significant experience of the issue of industrial relations and so on.

To move on slightly, I went to Buswells Hotel this afternoon to meet the people who own these farms. People were crying, devastated and broken. One of them is in the Minister of State's constituency in Stradbally. At the end of the day, what these people are doing is legal. It is a legitimate, legal business. It is an enterprise. The Minister of State and I might not like it, but it is a legitimate, law-abiding business that is fully compliant with legislation.I thank the Fianna Fáil councillor, Norma Moriarty, who has been actively and regularly in touch with my office in the past week or two. She lives in Waterville and represents the people there. She is clearly a strong advocate of one of these farms. I acknowledge that.

I am somewhat surprised that while some members of the Government have made their views known, there are no Government amendments. That is a pity. The Government has a right to put down amendments, argue and make the case for them. We all accept that the battle around mink farms is over. The proprietors of these enterprises recognise it is over. The Minister of State recognises it is over. All of us in these Houses recognise it is over and the right thing to do is to ban fur farming. What is wrong is how we are treating these people. I was told by the people concerned there are 4,800 mink in one facility, 4,000 in another and 2,500 in a third. There are approximately 50 workers in these facilities. We need to upskill those workers and identify the issues. This section relates to the worker issue. I want workers to go on, retrain and reskill. I hope and would like to think that the entrepreneurs who own these farms will use their compensation as seed capital to develop other industries in rural communities because that is important. That is their choice. We live in a democracy. Those people have invested heavily. There are issues around the demolition of these places, which must be built into any compensation package. There are planning issues and constraints involved. There are also environmental considerations. Many of these buildings may have asbestos in them. There are implications in that regard which we must take into consideration. If they were to be demolished as agricultural animal husbandry buildings, they may not get permission in these particular locations and sites so that must be built into the compensation package. I think that is reasonable and fair.

When I met the people concerned, along with many of my colleagues from the House, I found them devastated, as anyone would be. If I was a poultry operator in the midlands and the Government decided for some reason to close my business, I would expect compensation, as would anyone else. The important thing is that these are legal and viable businesses. The Government is going to issue a decree to close them down. If that is Government policy, it is Government policy. I also believe they should be closed down but I do not believe in the way the people concerned are being treated. There has been a suggestion that it is all going to be done via some regulations. This is the Oireachtas. We are dealing with primary legislation at this particular point and I am not comfortable with divesting the Seanad of a certain amount of control and power that will determine the compensation package these people get.

I am concerned. We must support and stand in solidarity not only with the owners of these facilities but also with the workers. Four or five weeks is simply not enough. They need opportunities. Many of them have been in this business for a long time. Many of them work part time and do not have full-time work. There are a whole range of issues we must look at.

We are at somewhat of a disadvantage here today, as are the proprietors of these businesses, because we have no sight of a Grant Thornton report. We believe in openness and transparency in a democracy and I call on the Minister of State, even at this late stage, to publish the Grant Thornton report, which I am reliably told cost over €100,000 of taxpayers' money to commission. We need to see the recommendations of that report. We need to share that report and the rationale with the people involved. The real problem here is the communication of this Government message - how it is being communicated or not communicated. We must set out the logic and rationale and support the people.

The Green Party made this a real issue in terms of policy, and rightly so. This was a particular element of its programme for Government. No one gets everything they want in government. It is all about compromise and I respect and acknowledge that. The Green Party drove this agenda on this occasion. I ask the Minister of State to stand in solidarity with these workers. As I said, I spoke to workers from the Minister of State's constituency today. There is no bias. They are just devastated because of what is going to happen to their income, the people they trained up and their stock. Their valuable stock cannot be sold outside the State. Under this legislation, that stock must be destroyed humanely, and rightly and properly so. They cannot get any value from these well-bred and well-stocked animals that are very successful. Those who know a little about mink farming understand there is constant rotation of mink so those proprietors have very healthy stock. They have been responsible owners who have complied with the law. I ask the Minister of State to publish the Grant Thornton report and make it available to us, as legislators. We are entitled to see it. The State has paid for that report. It is not the property of any one individual in the Department. There should be an executive summary, if not the whole report, given to the owners. Let us stand in solidarity with fewer than 50 workers. Let us give them a decent package and recognise that the State is closing down this viable business for them.