Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. I have a couple of queries to try to tease things out a little further. The Minister of State spoke about "extra payments" and funds for retraining and reskilling. I do not think I am misquoting him. First of all, I want to acknowledge that he is trying to be constructive. I am not trying to be difficult, but "extra payments" can mean absolutely anything. This happens less and less these days, unfortunately, but what normally happens when people lose their jobs is that good employers negotiate a package which is based around years of service and compensation per years of service. The Minister of State has not said those words, yet those words do not commit him to any particular amount of money but rather a principle that has been well established across our economy for many decades. The difficulty with "extra payments", to use the words the Minister of State did, is that they can be as little or as much as possible. It is guesswork.

If the Minister of State addressed the other issue that I and others have raised, and committed to meet farmers this week and sit down with them to describe what the extra payments could be, that would help us enormously. I am trying to be constructive. Just to be clear, there is absolutely no reason a Minister or Minister of State should not sit down with these people now. There is no legal impediment. The lack of such a meeting is at the heart of many of the difficulties we are collectively trying to deal with today.

To be helpful, it is important that the Minister of State elaborates on the phrase "extra payments", with specific reference to an enhanced redundancy package. Those three words would be very helpful. If the Minister of State went on to say that such a package would be based on additional weeks per year of service, that would be even more helpful. This is not pinning the Minister of State to any particular amount of money. We are not negotiating; rather, we are setting out the principles around which a negotiation should take place. Any decent Government would agree to those principles. They have been well established in industrial relations for a lot longer than I have been around. It would be helpful if the Minister of State could comment on that and finally, and crucially, agree to sit down with these people. There is no reason he cannot do that.