Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I first want to support the comments made by Senator Boyhan about agriculture regarding the extraordinary figure of more than €19 billion in exports. We should also recognise why must deal with environmental issues. Farmers are well tuned into that and will make some of the necessary changes. We must realise that this is huge for our economy going forward. We need to be careful about at times saying things that can damage that business. There was more than €19 billion and there are 145,000 people who are employed in the business. Sometimes, some people who seem to come out with an anti-farmer agenda are reckless in their comments. They are absolutely reckless. Do we realise how many jobs are involved in the agricultural sector? Do we realise how much they mean to our balance of payments? Some of those comments are not necessary at all. I say this on the basis that I engage with farmers all the time and they want to make the environmental changes. They acknowledge there is a challenge. The Minister for agriculture and the Ministers of State in that Department are doing a very good job to balance everything here and being responsible in looking after their sector and acknowledging the environmental challenges also. Senator Boyhan’s comments this morning were important.

Finally, as a person who spent 20 years in the broadcasting sector, and I could not be around yesterday because of personal issues, I very much support Senator Cassells’s call for a media literacy debate here in this Chamber with the relevant Ministers. Certainly, those people in local radio work very hard. Senator Cassells gave a figure of more than €160 million in revenue that they take in, compared to €1 billion in social media. That shows how hard they have to work. They are employing a lot of people around this country. I want to support the comments by Senator Cassells. It will probably be 2024 when we do that, but it would be a very important debate to have.