Local TD Calls For Area-Based Payment Scheme For Farmers Raising the Prospect Of Crisis In the Sector

Wicklow Wexford TD Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin has raised the plight of farmers in the Dáil over the crisis facing Ireland’s tillage farmers.

There have been calls from a local TD in the Dail for the development of an area-based payment scheme for farmers. 

Farmers are in crisis after two disastrous years with calls for urgent government support according to Sinn Féin Wicklow Wexford TD Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin.

Farmers irecently blockaded a ship carrying 300,000 tonnes of foreign barley while its claimed trade deals like Mercosur will flood the market with cheap beef. 

Deputy Ó Súilleabháin says farmers in Ireland are over regulated and unrewarded:

''As you know, farmers are in intense crisis at the moment following two absolutely terrible years. I suppose one question I'd like to ask is will you, will the government introduce a proper area-based payment tillage incentive scheme. Currently the government are given 40 euro per acre while it needs to be at least 100 euro per acre or 250 per hectare as requested by the farming organisations who I have met with on a number of occasions.

So that really needs to be done as a matter of urgency. Farmers are being fleeced, rising input costs, machinery costs,  fertiliser costs, sprays, diesel, other things in the local hardware shop have gone up and they have less money to spend locally. So we're all being affected either directly or indirectly.''

Farmers in Ireland are living in a vassal state of servitude according to a local TD who is calling for producers to be protected and rewarded for their work.

Since the onset of the war in Ukraine, fertiliser prices have soared leaving farmers struggling to make ends meet amid tight margins and

Sinn Féin Wicklow-Wexford TD Fiontáin O Suilleabhain has highlighted in his request for area based payment scheme how prices are compromising farmers:

''Looking at fertiliser prices, these have tripled since the Ukrainian war.So I mean how can farmers withstand that three times the price? The government of course closed down our own fertiliser factory in Arklow back in my own local area back in 2002. Just three years later they torpedoed the sugar beet industry in the southeast and beyond.

However barley now amazingly costs the same as it did back in 1974, the year I started school, the year Abba won the Eurovision Song Contest. That's how much it costs. So we use around 300,000 tons of grain in the drinks industry annually and we know we don't have enough grain in Ireland.

So at the very minimum we should be using all the Irish grain first before mass importation and Martin just pointed out this idiocy of how we're having Irish whiskey that doesn't need to have Irish grain in it.  So I'm sure you would agree that that needs to be looked at straight away. I mean mass importation of our products certainly wasn't the vision of the patriotic founding fathers of this country, of the proclamation or the democratic programme of the first Dáil.

They spoke about having some level of economic independence whereas at the moment we're becoming very much a dependent vassal state rather than a sovereign one. I mean Ireland has mainly stopped growing grain for human consumption. Flour imports, the majority of it is imported, 69% from the UK, 11% from Germany, 8% from France.''

He has highlighted the tenacity of local farmers in Wicklow and Wexford in adverse cirumstances:

''That's why I salute the farmers in the southeast last week who blockaded a boat coming into Wexford with 300,000 tons of foreign barley because I mean that direct action like the French farmers, that's something good that we can import from France and I mean this imported grain is a substandard. It often has black grass which is an invasive species. It's genetically modified when it's coming in with a massive carbon footprint as well so it doesn't make any sense.

So just as we're insanely doing with Mercosur, flooding the market with 90,000 tons of untraceable beef, growing the rainforests that have been cut down in South America and we're saying that this is a sustainable solution. It's absolute lunacy and I mean at the same time Irish farmers are over-regulated, they're highly regulated so if things don't change we could actually have a food shortage in years to come.''