Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have an opportunity to speak on this very important issue. It is ironic that this is the second time in recent weeks that we have discussed agriculture. That shows the important role it currently plays and indicates the importance it will have in the future. I welcome today's debate because in the previous Dáil we had a very limited opportunity to discuss agriculture.

During the Celtic tiger years agriculture was a lost leader. Nobody wanted to talk about it. It was not sexy to talk about agriculture. We have now moved on to a different level. In the glory years we even lost a key element of the agriculture sector, namely, the sugar industry. It was a huge loss to a number of areas, including my area of Carlow. Those areas have not recovered since. That is evident across the board in the towns in County Carlow. There has been a serious negative knock-on effect following the loss of the sugar industry. During the difficult recessionary years agriculture has been the key driver of the revitalisation of the economy in which it has played a key role. Its turnover has amounted to €26 billion and there are 160,000 jobs involved in the sector. Agricultural exports reached €10.83 billion last year. Without agriculture the rural economy will not be able to develop. We have heard much talk recently about rural rejuvenation and decline. It is very important that the rural economy is developed but without agriculture being at the forefront of that we will not have very prosperous rural areas. It is important that we bear that in mind.

All sectors of the agricultural economy and community play a key role.

If the rural economy is going well, it has a knock-on effect on the construction, machinery and fuel industries, as well as on local shops. In general, if agriculture is going well, farmers will spend money straight away when they have it. I commend those who were involved in the construction of the new Food Wise 2025 initiative, in which the plan is to increase the value of exports to €19 billion by 2025, with an additional 23,000 jobs being created in that sector, which will be hugely beneficial to rural Ireland.

In recent years, a new CAP was renegotiated, which is very important. At the beginning of that process it did not look promising for Ireland, but as time moved on it resulted in huge amounts of money that will be funnelled into rural Ireland through Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 funding. This will be achieved through the basic payment in Pillar 1 and the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS, and the beef genomics scheme, for example, in Pillar 2. As we move on to the next stage, the mid-term review of the CAP will be important. There has been much recent talk in this regard and it is now more important than ever to have an honest discussion about the mid-term review and to have a simplified version of the CAP.

As for the key areas in agriculture, the dairy, beef, tillage and sheep sectors are going through a difficult time at present. From the perspective of the dairy sector, there has been much talk about quotas and so on, but in 2009, before quotas were abolished, the dairy sector went through a highly difficult spell, when prices were as low as they are at present. While we currently are in a difficult spell, it is important to remember that although the price of a litre of milk to the farmer was 28 cent in 1995, and 21 years later, in 2016, the price per litre is 24 cent, the key issue is that over the intervening 21 years, the cost of production has increased by 50%.

Volatility, which has been the in-word in recent years, was evident in 2009 and people are going through a difficult spell at present. While there will be challenges to deal with, volatility will also be a problem for the future. To a certain extent, Ireland is playing hardball on the world market, and as it only provides 1% of the milk in that market, what is done here will have a small effect on the overall price. However, what we can learn from the current position is how to deal with volatility in the future, and this is extremely important. As Deputy Ferris mentioned earlier, the agriculture committee of which Deputies Heydon, Ferris and I were part invited all stakeholders involved in the dairy sector, including the banks, the farm organisations, the processors and the producers, to discuss the position at that time. The key outcome of that process was that it was necessary to get better before getting bigger and that it would be necessary to teach and encourage farmers to produce as much as possible from grass-based systems. That is the way forward, and Members will have noted how things have declined up the road in the North and across the water in England and how difficult people there and in New Zealand find it at present. In order to move on in the future, we must learn from the mistakes they made. At the same time, however, despite the existing challenges, there is huge potential in the dairy sector. We must be able to plan for the future and provide funds. One key recommendation from the report published by the aforementioned joint committee on how to deal with volatility in the sector was the possibility of establishing an insurance fund during the good times to enable development in the bad times for the future, and hopefully this can be taken on board.

The beef sector is another area that is currently going through a difficult spell, but it is to be hoped that the producer group that has come from the beef forum will be highly beneficial in this regard.

Am I running out of time?

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