Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)

At the outset, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Councillor Aoife Davitt on becoming the first female cathaoirleach of the county council of my native Westmeath. As we all know, Aoife is a sister of our colleague Senator Davitt. It is annual general meeting time for the councils, so I congratulate and wish all incoming cathaoirligh the very best of good luck and compliment the outgoing. However, I give a special mention to Councillor Davitt on becoming the first female cathaoirleach of Westmeath County Council in its 126-year history.

The issue I want to raise with the Leader this morning is based on the front page of today's Irish Independent, which carries a large banner heading stating that the days of cheap food are over. We need to have a debate on this. The article is based on food inflation, and the timing of same is probably very appropriate because we are expecting some decision on the multi-annual financial framework within Europe next week. That is basically where our food policy and food prices are determined through the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. The CAP was formed in 1962 by the then EEC. The reasoning behind the CAP was to make sure we had a secure supply of top-quality cheap food for the residents of Europe. With every new negotiated CAP and multi-annual financial framework, that budget has been eaten into for security or environmental schemes or whatever. We need to go back to basics, and we need to make sure that if we are dragged into a debate about food prices, we will not get into a race to the bottom and then start bringing in untraceable, poor-quality food just to keep the price down. The solution to the problem is making sure we get a ring-fenced CAP budget within the multi-annual financial framework that will be announced next week. Sooner rather than later, we need a debate in this Chamber on the broad issue of food security as opposed to separate issues of financing and prices. Food security is a major issue. I warn against the race to the bottom and keeping prices down by bringing in poorer quality food from South America. I have to say it.