Tillage farmers, as the Minister of State knows, are in deep crisis. The question I want to ask is whether the Government will introduce a proper area-based payment tillage incentive scheme. Currently, the Government is giving just €40 per acre while it needs to be at least €100 per acre or €250 per hectare, as requested by the farming organisations. It really needs to be done as a matter of urgency in this crisis. Irish farmers are being fleeced with rising input costs, machinery costs, fertiliser, sprays, diesel and other things in the local hardware shop that they are buying. They have less money to spend locally so we are all being affected, directly or indirectly. Fertiliser prices have tripled since the Ukrainian war so I am just wondering how can farmers withstand this. Of course, the Government closed down our own fertiliser industry in Arklow in 2002. Only three years later, they torpedoed the sugar beet industry in the south east and beyond. However, unbelievably, barley now costs the same as it did in 1974, the year that Abba won the Eurovision Song Contest and I started school. That was the price back then and it has not changed. It is crazy stuff. We use approximately 300,000 tonnes of grain in the drinks industry annually. We know that we do not have enough grain in Ireland, so at the very minimum, we should be using all Irish grain first before mass importation. Would the Government not agree on this? It is fairly obvious. Mass importation of products is not the vision of our patriotic founding fathers, the 1916 Proclamation or the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil - politicians who wanted us to have some level of economic independence. However, Ireland is slowly becoming a dependent vassal state, not an independent and sovereign one that our patriots gave their lives for. Ireland has stopped growing grain for human consumption, such as flour, would you believe. It imports the majority of it: approximately 69% from the UK, 11% from Germany, and 8% from France. That is why I salute the farmers in the south east who, last week, attempted to blockade a boat coming into Wexford with 300,000 tonnes of foreign barley. Direct action is one good thing we are importing from France and we need to see more of it. The imported grain is substandard and often genetically modified. It is coming in with blackgrass, which is an invasive species. That is not to mention the huge carbon footprint of all this importation of food. As Deputy Carthy mentioned earlier, we are insanely planning with Mercosur to flood the European market with 99,000 tonnes of untraceable beef produced in South America on land that was once rainforest. It is insane. At the same time, Irish farmers are highly regulated. If things do not change, we could face a food shortage in years to come. A tillage farmer who contacted me in my area, Thomas Kenny, wants to hand the baton on to his son, Tomás, who is 15 years old and who I used teach. Thomas is a great, passionate farmer, but the question I would like to put to the Government is whether i can guarantee that Tomás will have a future in farming in this country. Will it be viable for him? His father, Thomas, needs to know if he is to pass on the farm to him. Will the Government introduce a proper area-based tillage incentive scheme of at least €100 per acre, that is, €250 per hectare, because otherwise we will drive a nail into the coffin of Irish farming, and we have been farming for 6,000 years in this country. It looks like we are going to drive every farmer off the land, especially every young farmer. I would like to know the answer.

Sentiment score: 0.03

I am not convinced by the Government's response. The fact of the matter is that we are in the middle of a crisis and farmers have no increase this year. It is still €40 per acre. In her response, the Minister of State mentioned the drinks industry. We have such opportunities but it is incredible to believe that our famous Irish whiskey does not have a requirement to have Irish grain in it. This is absolutely incredible. It is one small thing. There would be incredible opportunities if we were to make additional changes, as well as additional payments, and have proper regulation whereby there should be Irish grain in Irish whiskey. It is a very basic requirement. We could do great things and this is one small example. The Government really needs to have a vision for an industry that is dying on its feet. This is something we have been doing in Ireland for 6,000 years and it would be shameful if we were to drive all the young farmers off the land. Many of them do not see a future and neither do their parents with regard to passing on the farm to their children.

Sentiment score: 0.02