Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his officials here today. This is a very important Bill and Fianna Fáil welcomes and supports it. Sometimes as a nation we forget how important the agrifood sector is to all of us. This is not just about agriculture. This is about jobs, families and income. The agrifood sector is our most indigenous industry providing almost 200,000 jobs and accounting for 10% of all Irish exports.

I want to divert briefly. Over recent years I am up here very early in the city and in the mornings I would meet Charlie going to his office at 6 a.m. and I would say "Where are you going at this hour of the morning?". He would tell me he was going on the phone with his officials to talk to some other country about our exports. For me that is really good commitment not alone from the Minister but from the people around him. That is how he has worked in this industry and that is how he has worked so hard on our exports, which is really crucial for a small island country.

Our sector has come through a really difficult period. We have had Brexit, Covid, the war in Ukraine, and the challenge of the new CAP. Again, the Minister and his officials are to be commended because certainly for many of the smaller and medium-sized farms in this country they have brought a really new and innovative area to CAP. We have some teething problems with some of that but the extra money and the extra funding is very important, as is how we can draw down that money.

We have also had the usual weather. The weather has become a huge problem for the farming sector, not just agriculture but horticulture as well. Even this year we were lucky not to get as much rain but we have had a terrible lack of sun, which has created a problem for the amount of fodder that has come off farms.

The Fianna Fáil Party is fully committed to supporting farmers and the food businesses that underpin the vitality of rural villages and towns across this country. Going back a few years farmers were very angry and upset. The Minister, Deputy McConalogue, has built many bridges with those farmers. The Minister has gone out and met those people, when some would advise him not to go public. The Minister has smoothed across a whole lot of areas to have a better working relationship with the farming community. This is crucial and important to our party. It is really important. I am not saying that we deny environmental issues because we all know that we have to work on environmental issues. Farmers themselves know they have to work on environmental issues.The building of those bridges in order to bring people with you, not to isolate people or make them feel isolated, is important. I know the Minister worked hard to ensure he got the message out to farmers. He is not against them. He is with them, but we cannot agree on everything. We cannot accept everything they want. We have to try to accommodate them as best we can. It is a fickle business, it can be up one year and down the next. It is important that we understand that. Rural people have a good understanding of it. We know the importance of farming and the heartbeat that it is is to rural areas. For future generations, for farming to exist, we have to support it.

Setting this up was another commitment by our own party and by the Government. We have a situation where a Government and a party is honouring a commitment that was made. The Minister has explained the Bill and its legislative area. I will not go into all that again. I welcome it. Deputy McConalogue has done a good job as Minister. I wish him well whenever the general election comes around.