Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to be associated with the words of the Cathaoirleach on the passing of our former colleague, Brendan Daly. I extend my sympathies and condolences to the Daly family and to the Briscoe family on the death of former Deputy and Lord Mayor, Ben Briscoe.

It would be remiss of me to allow the opportunity to pass without mentioning the horrific scenes that everybody witnessed last night on the “RTÉ Investigates” programme. As a farmer myself, and as somebody who was selected here on the Agricultural Panel and who sits on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, I condemn what was seen last night as totally deplorable and unacceptable.

On behalf of the Government, the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, has, since his appointment, led the way on animal welfare issues. I know he has already initiated an investigation in his Department and requested the footage from RTÉ, and I hope that footage is forthcoming. The entire unedited footage that is available to Fran McNulty or RTÉ needs to be made available to the Department. After the recess, when we come back in the autumn, we might ask the Minister to come to the House to brief us on the progress of his investigation. No stone should be left unturned to get to the perpetrators of what we saw last night.

As somebody who represents the agriculture sector, I feel it is important to say that the vast majority - I would say 99.9% - of farmers pride themselves on their husbandry and their love and care for their animals.Much of what we saw last night was off farm. It is important that we do not jump on bandwagons and take an opportunity to blacken all farmers with the one brush. It has to be noted that the vast majority of the bad coverage, which was almost unwatchable last night, was archive footage from New Zealand and France. That is not taking away from the issues we have in Ireland and that did happen. However, we cannot just whip the agricultural sector today based on what we saw last night.