Victor Boyhan (Independent)

I welcome the Minister. It is good to see him in the House. It is always good to have the opportunity to talk about agriculture. I am not going to repeat all the 11 asks Fine Gael has put in its Private Members' Bill. I thank the party for bringing this Private Members' business before us today. All those asks are, of course, in the programme for Government. There is nothing contentious about any of that. Well done and I wish Members well in pursuing their colleagues in government over its implementation. Cut and pasted today, every line of this was in the programme for Government, so there is no dispute over it. The Government is hopefully here to stay for a few years and will have plenty of time to implement it. I genuinely wish everyone well.I want to single out some key issues that are pertinent to this debate. I will use my time wisely. I thank the IFA, ICMSA, ICSA and various other farm organisations for their collective collaboration and advocacy in relation to their field.

A number of Senators here are on the joint agriculture committee, including myself. We have just come from a reasonably robust debate, as always in agriculture and politics, about tillage. The Minister will be aware of the Killashee Hotel. A vast number of people came out to that hotel in the heart of the Minister's constituency of Kildare South and articulated many views on the tillage sector. I will not go into them at great length. There are conflicting views between the IFA and the Irish Grain Growers on the funding required. The IFA advocated today for €65 million and the Irish Grain Growers advocated for €92 million per annum over five years. There is a big difference between those two figures from two representative groups in the sector. That is a big bridge to cross and a challenge for the Minister.

One of the key takeaways was this. I tried to cut to the chase and asked both of them in the committee less than an hour ago to give me three goals they wanted us to achieve for them and the sector. We do not need chapter and verse. We could write books about policy but I asked for a simple message and takeaway. One thing repeated by everybody was about the report on Food Vision 2030, the importance and significance of the objectives the Minister and others have signed up to in relation to the tillage group and how that will be rolled out. I am familiar with the dashboard and commend the Minister and Department on putting it in place. I want to drop that back in to the Minister. He will know about it anyway but it is important and I want to reiterate that commitment.

There are some other key messages I want to share. They talked about the ask and I have spoken about that. The Irish Grain Growers is crystal clear in what it is asking. The Minister has clearly had discussions with the organisation. The representatives raised the issue of the quality of this gold standard grain. This is pertinent to distilleries. They mentioned the branding and marketing of this unique gold standard grain for Ireland, and the added value of that. We see the challenges around the American market and tariffs, but how can we differentiate? Of course, we have challenges with imports of other grains and we do not produce enough grain for our own needs in terms of feed and everything. The Minister knows that so I will not go into great detail.

We need to look at tax reliefs. There is a great expectation on the Minister. Some of his parliamentary colleagues spoke of him, his work and the expectation on him to deliver for farmers. That is a matter for him and I do not expect him to talk about budgetary matters today but it is important.

I like to go into talks and make an ask and I want to make an ask of the Minister. It relates to the Comptroller and Auditor General. He issued a report yesterday that I had a look at today. Chapter 14 is about the bovine TB eradication programme. There are many critical aspects to it. They are far-reaching and factual. It is a significant office in the monitoring of departmental performances. He makes four recommendations. The first is that "The Department should review the target for eradication in order to ensure it remains appropriate and realistic" and provide "a revised long-term timeline for eradication". Second, "The Department should consider designing a comprehensive set of performance measures which are achievable and relevant to the strategic aims of the bovine TB eradication programme." Third, "The Department should consider adopting measures such as aligning the payment of compensation to effective biosecurity measures." Finally, "The Department should ensure that it is in full compliance with the minimum requirements specified in SI 58/2015" and it goes on.

What are interesting are the responses from the Department. The Department's response to this report, which was circulated to all Oireachtas Members in the past 24 hours, talked about the first quarter of 2026 to look at the recommendations. I am not criticising that but I am asking the Minister to take on board the need for resources to deal with this matter. There are clearly funding, resources and commitments called for in this document. The Minister is giving a commitment and that is great. It is the first quarter of 2026. My ask is that the Minister keep the focus on and the resources in place to deliver the Comptroller and Auditor General's reasonable requests on the bovine TB eradication programme. I thank the Minister for his time.