Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 22 Jun 2023

Vol. 1040 No. 5

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions

Deputy Pearse Doherty

D'fhógair an Coimisiún Eorpach inné gurb é an Stát seo an stát is daoire san Aontas Eorpach. De réir mar a leanann oibrithe agus teaghlaigh ag streachailt leis an ghéarchéim costais maireachtála, leanann an Rialtas ag teip ar ghnáthdhaoine na tíre seo.

Yesterday, the European Commission published figures confirming for workers and families what they have known for a long time, namely, that we live in a rip-off Republic. The Commission confirmed that this State is the most expensive place to live in the European Union. It is 46% higher than the European average. Not only this, but the gap has been growing since 2015.

On energy costs, we are the second most expensive in the European Union. We have the most expensive health costs in the EU, which are a staggering 82% above the European average. This is what households are dealing with when they continue to struggle under the biggest cost-of-living crisis in a generation.

Figures that were released earlier this week show that Irish living standards have fallen further behind other European countries, continuing a downward trend since Fine Gael took power nearly a decade ago. In fact, we are now at the bottom half of the European league table. This is the economic performance of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party, while workers and families are being fleeced by the highest prices in Europe and getting less and less for their hard-earned money. They work hard but the economy is not working for them.

That is the Government's legacy. That is the Government's failure. It exposes the growing gap between the economic success story that Government Ministers like to tell and the financial reality facing hard-working and hard-pressed families and households. The Government’s failure to convert the economic gains that they celebrate into better living standards for our people is clear. The housing crisis was created and made worse by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, there is a worsening state of our health service and there are sky-high living costs.

These failures continue to hit the pockets and the quality of life of workers and families. This drift is now growing. It is a growing threat to our economy. It is impacting, as I am sure the Minister has heard, the ability of firms to hire and retain workers. It is influencing their investment decisions for the future. Nowhere is the rip-off that workers and families face more evident than in the extortionate energy bills they have now been paying for months.

Despite a drastic fall in wholesale prices, energy bills remain sky high. In the 12 months to March, consumer prices rose by 72%. During the same period, wholesale energy prices decreased by 50%. Indeed, yesterday, the Central Bank found that while electricity prices in Europe have fallen dramatically in recent months, Irish prices remain stubbornly high. This is a cause of real concern.

I sent a request to the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, on behalf of Sinn Féin calling on it to undertake an intensive supervision of the prices that energy companies are charging their customers. This is key to ensuring that workers and families are not being fleeced, that there is fairness in the market and ultimately that prices come down for workers, families and business customers.

On 1 March, when the Taoiseach was challenged about these costs, he said he would take action if the companies did not pass on savings. Last week, he made a complete U-turn and he said that energy prices will remain high this coming winter. The Minister’s time for sitting on his hands is over. Families, customers and businesses are being fleeced. Will the Minister support Sinn Féin's call for the energy regulator to take this matter seriously and carry out a proper, intrusive investigation into the prices that Irish customers are being charged? Has the Government called in the energy companies to discuss this matter with them?

Minister for Finance (Deputy Michael McGrath)

First, I want to contest the Deputy’s central thesis that Ireland is some kind of a basket case. That is not the case. He spoke of how we talk about the story of economic success. That is a real story. Some 2.6 million people at work is not a fantasy. They are real people, they include the Deputy’s constituents and they are all over the country. Unemployment is less than 4% at this point in time. The economy is continuing to grow and is among the fastest-growing economies over the last number of years in Europe. We have budget surpluses because we are managing the country’s finances well. That gives us policy options we can deliberate on over the weeks and months ahead.

The Deputy spoke about the real-life experiences of people. Those are what we are all here to try to improve. When I look at health, I see better outcomes. I see longer life expectancies.

Minister for Health (Deputy Stephen Donnelly)

Hear, hear.

Deputy Michael McGrath

Of course, we see challenges every single day in our health system. We have recruited approximately 20,000 more people in health since the beginning of the pandemic. The Deputy spoke about living standards. Living standards in Ireland over the last number of decades have improved, without question. We have seen a reduction in inequality in Ireland over that period of time as well. Our investment in education is held up across the world as being of the highest standard.

Those points are important by means of context. When you talk about price levels in Ireland relative to elsewhere in Europe, of course there is a story there. There is also a story in the fact that we were held up in another report earlier this week as being the second most competitive economy among a large number of economies that were examined as part of that particular study.

Of course, incomes in Ireland, as the Deputy well knows, are well above the EU average. That also has to be taken into account. That being said, there is no question that inflation has had a really negative impact on the people we all represent. As a Government, we have sought to respond in the best way that we could. We brought in approximately €12 billion of additional measures since the beginning of last year to help households, to reduce the burden of income tax, to increase social welfare, to bring in a whole range of one-off payments, to introduce four different electricity credits, and to help the business sector to meet the costs it is facing in the form of an exceptional energy support scheme. The Government will be doing more. We are now finalising the summer economic statement, which will set out the overall budgetary strategy for the autumn budget. It will lay out the amounts of resources we have available.

Energy costs are a key issue for households and we acknowledge that. We need to see the dramatic reductions in wholesale energy costs passing through to consumers more quickly. We need to see consumers at a retail level benefiting from those reductions. Wholesale electricity prices decreased by more than 16% in the last monthly data that are available. Between May 2023 and May 2022, electricity costs actually came down by 26%. I think the Deputy was quoting figures on gas costs, which had even greater rates of reduction.

It is my view that we have not to date had an adequate explanation for the delay in the pass through of those reductions. We all understand there is complexity. We understand there is a lag. We also understand futures contracts, hedging and the instruments that commercial companies enter into, but that said, there is undoubtedly scope over the weeks and the months ahead for the energy companies to reduce the prices that consumers are being charged. I know that the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and his Department, are actively engaging and meeting with the companies to understand fully those details and complexities and to make the case for a reduction in the prices that the consumers we represent are currently facing.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

The Minister may not like the picture that I presented, but it was based on European Commission stats and facts. We are the most expensive country in which to live in the European Union. I am sure the Minister does not dispute that. We have got the most expensive health costs in the European Union - 82% higher than the European average. In energy costs, we are the second most expensive in the European Union. The Minister should not get me started about housing, rent or indeed mobile phone and communications, where Ireland is again top of the league. We are living in a very expensive State.

One of the biggest rip-offs that is happening at the minute is in terms of energy costs. The Minister talks about the future and over the coming months. It is the same stuff that the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, talked about in March before he made a U-turn and then told everybody to expect higher energy costs right through the winter. These costs should be down by now, despite hedging. We have seen wholesale energy costs reduce since March of last year, and the energy companies have been increasing prices by 72% during that period, yet wholesale energy prices have come down by 50% over the same period. We need an investigation into what is happening to energy costs. We have seen the Central Bank point out very clearly in its quarterly bulletin-----

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

-----I will finish on this point – that the rest of Europe has seen its energy costs reduce and come back to a level with a bit of normality, yet we are still sky high.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I call on the Minister to respond.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

Not one domestic company has reduced its energy costs.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I thank the Deputy.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

Will the Minister support an investigation-----

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We are way over time.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

-----by the Commission for Energy Regulation into what is happening in terms of these companies?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We are way over time. I ask for the Deputy's co-operation.

Deputy Michael McGrath

We have statutory bodies that this House has empowered through legislation to carry out certain functions, and when it comes to ensuring that we have a competitive marketplace generally and that there are no anti-competitive practices. We have the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. It has examined the retail sector, for example, and it has not stood up some of the charges that have been made by the Opposition on the level of competition in that sector. It has extensive powers. We have the energy regulator as well, which also has extensive powers, but we as a Government do not set prices. We are not responsible for energy pricing, but we of course have responsibility for the overall environment within which these prices are being set. We absolutely have an obligation to call out where we see it that there is a justification for a greater pass through to the consumers at a retail level of the dramatic reductions that there have been at wholesale level. I have no doubt they will come, but they need to come quickly because it should not fall on taxpayers to have to step in and support households who are paying higher prices than the market justifies at this time.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

Will the Government support an investigation?

Deputy Ivana Bacik

This morning I want to raise with the Minister serious concerns around child protection and children's welfare that have been highlighted in a report released today by UCD's sexual exploitation research programme, SERP. The study is about young women and children in State care and in residential care homes and it makes for very distressing reading. It provides a very alarming account of the targeting and sexual exploitation of children and teenagers in State care. The exploitation is being carried out by co-ordinated gangs. The harrowing findings in this research detail cases of girls being taken by taxi from residential care homes to hotels where they were then sexually exploited and abused.

The Minister might have heard Ruth Breslin speak on the matter this morning. The report's authors describe an appalling vista of cars lining up at night outside State-funded and run residential care homes, waiting for young women and girls to come out so they can be taken away. The abuse appears to be systematic and orchestrated. It is an appalling finding. What is also appalling is the perception that emerges from within the study that authorities have grown “tired” of dealing with so-called “problematic” young girls in care being reported missing. That is quite simply not good enough. These girls are at a high risk of sexual exploitation and abuse. Indeed, Tusla has accepted that it failed to keep children safe. It has said this in part due to an insufficient supply of residential places to allow children at risk to move elsewhere to a place of greater safety.

Many years ago, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I used to represent children in State care. There was a real scarcity then of residential places to keep children safe in these situations. We are now a prosperous country. I have listened to the Minister outline the benefits of prosperity and what is effectively full employment. It is appalling therefore that in 2023 we are still seeing a lack of places where children can be kept safe.

My first question echoes that posed by Tanya Ward, CEO of the Children's Rights Alliance, who has asked in response to this report how many cases of suspected abuse of children in State care have been passed on to Tusla or to the Garda. Has the Government been monitoring these awful cases? Does the Government’s reported new focus on poverty and child poverty in particular include these concerns in its scope?

As Minister for Finance, how does he propose to address the funding problems reported by Tusla, which are leaving children so exposed to exploitation?

I heard the Minister announce earlier today that every worker in the State will receive a tax cut in the budget this October. How about we guarantee instead that every child in the State will receive an appropriate home, a place of safety? This Government has an appalling record also on child homelessness. Some years ago, the former Deputy and Minister of State, Jan O'Sullivan, introduced the homeless families Bill, which would prioritise the rights of children at risk of homelessness. Will the Minister address the needs of homeless children in a meaningful way by accepting our Bill? What does the Minister propose to do in response to today’s report by UCD’s SERP centre?

Deputy Michael McGrath

At the outset I want to say that the report and the findings contained within it are deeply shocking. It is disturbing to think that there are any individual examples of that kind of behaviour and practice happening in Ireland now or in the past. I assure Deputy Bacik, the House and the general public that this will be treated with the utmost seriousness, which it deserves.

We welcome the fact that this scoping study on the sexual exploitation of children and young people in Ireland has been conducted by UCD. The Department of Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is working closely with Tusla's senior management on the subject of child sexual exploitation and is now going to prioritise a review of the findings of this scoping study and its recommendations in the immediate period ahead. This is as one would expect and is right and proper. The study is a very important piece of research into the sexual exploitation of children by potential organised groups of predatory men in our society. Close liaison into the study's findings will also take place between Tusla and An Garda Síochána. The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth will also work with the Department of Justice to review the findings and recommendations of this report.

I acknowledge that the scoping study outlines that the interview part of the research took place three years ago. I should point out that in the interim period, a number of important developments have taken place in this area as a key priority to assist with the reporting of child sexual exploitation. I have got a whole list of measures laid out here by the Department of steps that have been taken since then, but I do not think it is the day to be going into those. I acknowledge that the contents of the scoping study are shocking.

On the question of funding, I think it would be readily acknowledged by the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and Tusla that in recent years we have seen a step change in its funding in the budgets that I negotiated with the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, as is right and proper. The truth is that the needs are growing and society is becoming more diverse and more complex. We have more minors and children coming into Ireland. As Deputy Bacik is aware through her work, it is the case that all unaccompanied minors who arrive in Ireland are referred by Department of Justice officials to Tusla's team for separated children seeking international protection. One of the first and most important duties of any state is to protect our children. We will certainly work with Deputy Bacik, everyone in the House and with all of the key stakeholders to make sure that the content of this study is very carefully examined and is responded to in the most forceful way we possibly can.

Deputy Ivana Bacik

I thank the Minister for his response.

It is good to hear the Government is working to implement measures in response to these alarming findings from the SERP study. That is very welcome. Clearly the focus of this report is a child's right to be safe and a child's right to have a safe home. A government that was serious about guaranteeing that right for every child should be prioritising moving children out of homelessness and should be prioritising not only addressing these very stark findings on children in residential care but also addressing the real crisis facing the thousands of children who are currently in homelessness. That should be the key priority above and beyond tax cuts.

Issues relating to discrimination against children go more broadly than this. Back in December the Joint Committee on Gender Equality recommended a constitutional referendum to provide for a more inclusive definition of family to cover families that are not just based on marriage - for example, families with same-sex parents who are not married and families headed by single parents. What is the Government doing on that referendum on the inclusive definition of family with a focus on ensuring that children in non-constitutionally protected families are receiving appropriate protections and rights? It is again about that focus on a child's right and a child's right to safety. My questions are on a constitutional referendum and Labour's homeless families Bill.

Deputy Michael McGrath

On the question of a referendum, the relevant Cabinet committee is actively working on this issue. A meeting of that Cabinet committee will take place this afternoon as I understand it. It will be given further consideration and there will be engagement across the House and of course public confirmation of any final decision on that particular issue.

On child trafficking, since last year Tusla has partnered with the anti-child-trafficking organisation MECPATHS to raise awareness and to provide front-line staff across its services with training on child trafficking in Ireland, thereby increasing the agency's capacity to respond to what is an evolving area of need and indeed an increasing area of need given the migration crisis that is developing across the world. As the Deputy knows, An Garda Síochána and Tusla have a joint protocol and where family reunification is not possible Tusla will place the child with the foster family, in a residential care unit or in supported lodgings that meet their particular needs. In light of today's study, we will need to examine all those issues. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and Tusla will now be working as a priority on a response to this UCD study.

Deputy Joan Collins

The Taoiseach all but refused to answer my question on promised legislation on the matter I am raising today and so I am going to try again. The question is about segregation of Part V council tenants. In light of the situation in the Davitt apartment complex in Drimnagh and others around Dublin and in light of the fact that Part V tenancies are set to become even more important for housing supply with the increase in Part V requirements in Housing for All from 10% to 20%, how will the Government ensure that there is no physical or social segregation of Part V tenants now and into the future? The Taoiseach would not answer that question yesterday.

We now have numerous examples of council tenants being housed in segregated blocks, not given access to communal facilities that have been promised to them and not given the chance to pay fees to access amenities. Council tenants in the Davitt complex were not given access to the bike sheds. An Bord Pleanála approved planning permission on the Davitt complex with 119 car parking spaces for 265 apartments based on an argument by the developer that included the Davitt complex having extra bike parking spaces. Council tenants were not given access to bike lockup. How is this not being denied access to a communal amenity?

The complex was built on build-to-rent standards where the developer was allowed to trade off less private space and storage in individual apartments in exchange for more communal amenities. All communal amenities should be accessible for everybody in the complex. In the Planning and Development Act the need to counteract segregation based on social background is mentioned twice. It is mentioned seven times in the Housing Agency's Part V resource pack. It is mentioned three times in the ministerial guidelines on the Planning and Development Act.

In Drimnagh, council tenants in the Davitt House flats beside this complex have been left for decades in slum-like conditions with no maintenance, no retrofitting, damp, mould and cold. Living next them are Part V tenants in the Davitt complex segregated into one block, block D, with no access to the playground, car park or bike sheds. Next to them are non-council tenants with access to a car park, a cinema, a gym and a library. If this is not segregation based on social background, I do not know what is. I have serious concern for the future of the Government's housing plan if it is already neglecting and segregating council tenants. What will the Government do to make sure these issues of segregation are fixed now? These apartments were supposed to be pepper-potted into the complex so that there would be no segregation.

This is the Government's housing plan and it is expanding it. If there is an issue with councils implementing it, what will the Government do to step in and fix it?

Deputy Michael McGrath

I must apologise because I am not familiar with the detail of this particular case, the Davitt complex, but we will certainly look into it. I want to underline what the Government position is. Our position is that we support integration. The best developments around the country have a mix of tenure types, of house types and apartments, involving private, cost-rental, social and affordable housing. We certainly do not support segregation. There may well be a role here for the local authority to work out the application of Part V with the developer to ensure that there is proper integration and certainly not segregation.

The change to Part V is a positive development which means that in all future private developments we have Part V social and Part V affordable housing embedded within those developments. I have seen many examples in the past where the integration of Part V in developments has been seamless and invisible which is the way it should be. That is the nature of the integrated model of housing that we want to have in our country.

The Deputy has raised a very particular issue which warrants a considered response from the local authority, the approved housing body, AHB, if one is involved and indeed the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. We will certainly raise the issue with them. I want to be crystal clear as to what the Government position is. We support integration. We do not support segregation. Part V should be seamless in its application because it is a very positive thing have social affordable purchase and private housing at all situated together.

Deputy Joan Collins

The Davitt complex is one complex that we are very clear on because we have heard it directly from the horse's mouth, the tenants living there. We know it has happened elsewhere in the city. We are going in a very serious direction if we are going to have segregation. Those in block D are all council tenants. Tuath Housing is managing the 26 homes in block D that do not have access to the basic amenities in that complex. That cannot be allowed to happen and it must change. It was raised at a meeting of Dublin City Council last week and the housing manager said that they were told it was €81.50 to avail of the amenities in the in the complex and €75 for car parking spaces. These tenants are hospital workers and actors who do not have huge amounts of money to pay these things. Either the council should refund that or the situation on access to amenities should be sorted out at the planning stage. This was a build-to-rent standard where the spaces in the apartments were reduced on the basis that the tenants would have access to amenities. This needs to be dealt with.

Deputy Michael McGrath

Tuath Housing and Dublin City Council need to come back with a response on the issue. At the at the level of principle where amenities or facilities are being provided for development, they must be provided to all. How people came to occupy the property, whether it be Part V or private purchase, should not be the basis of denying anybody access to shared amenities. As the Deputy said, these were build-to-rent standard. That is the principle and that is the policy. We will ask the bodies to come back on the detail of this and lessons may need to be learned about at what point in the process to pin down exactly the application and treatment of Part V and where the units are going to be. It should not require planning conditions to ensure that all residents of a development be treated equally and have access to all the facilities and amenities in a development. If that is what it takes, that will need to be done.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

I wish to raise with the Minister the very serious matter of how Government policy is being fine-tuned to cut farm production by rewetting, cutting dairy cow numbers and the nitrates directive. This will impact directly on farmers’ incomes, reduce vibrancy in every sector of rural communities and impact on food security and increase the cost of food to everyone in our country. As we export high-quality food products all over the world, who is going to replace us? Will they create a greater carbon footprint globally? We are all under the same sky. Are more people going to be left to starve as over 750 million are starving in different parts of the world? Is it going to be the same story as the briquettes and peat moss, which we now import because we cannot produce them ourselves?

At the same time, many farmers are sequestering carbon all over our country, more carbon than they emit. It is wrong to penalise and curtail farmers for producing when no credit or recognition is given to those who are sequestering carbon. We are being told that the measuring of sequestration will not take place until at least 2027. How can that be fair?

With regard to rewetting, as proposed, this obnoxious proposal will only affect farmers who have worked hard for generations to drain and improve their land, to make their holdings more productive and to get value out of fertiliser and nutrients. Rewetting will not affect farmers in the Golden Vale of Tipperary whose lands cannot be wetted even on the wettest of days, so this rewetting is discriminating against farmers on poorer-type lands. Are we going to let more land go wild with overgrowth and scrub? We could have a scenario at some stage where thousands of acres will go on fire, with fires burning across county bounds.

The Minister's party leader, the Tánaiste, lost it when I asked him over a year ago about the Government proposal to cull the dairy herd. He denied it but it is now clear that the Government is at it again. It is clear to me that the Government has no appreciation of farmers.

The nitrates directive regulations will impact many dairy farms while doing very little to improve water quality, and will automatically reduce cow numbers and milk production. If they cannot buy or rent extra land, how can they even compete with the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, who, on behalf of the State, is on the market competing for the same land? Are we going to have more acres like the 26,000 acres in the national park in Killarney completely overrun with deer that are out of control, killing people on our roads and robbing farmers’ grazing? For decades, people were vilified and criminalised by environmentalists if they touched a deer. Now, the same environmentalists are saying that the deer will have to be culled to help biodiversity. They have no problem with the other problems they are creating.

Deputy Michael McGrath

I thank Deputy Healy-Rae. I want to underline the Government's support for the family farm and the principle of that all over Ireland. I negotiated with the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, over the last number of budgets, significant increases in the funding for his Department. He successfully negotiated a new strategic Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, plan worth almost €10 billion out to 2027, which resulted in an increase of 50% in the national contribution compared to the previous plan and provided for an extra €1 billion for families under that plan.

The Deputy made a point in regard to the dairy herd. The Food Vision dairy committee, which includes the farm organisations, has made a proposal along those lines. The Government has made no such decision in regard to a voluntary reduction in the dairy herd. Just to be clear on that, it is a proposal that has come from the committee, which includes the farm organisations, but the Government has not made any such decision in regard to that.

On the EU nature restoration law, as the Deputy knows, a proposed general approach was agreed earlier this week at the ministerial Council in Luxembourg, which was attended by both the Minister, Deputy Ryan, and the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. It gives the next Council Presidency a mandate to enter a trilogue phase with the Commission and the Parliament, leading to full ratification by the end of this year. Separately, the environment committee of the European Parliament considered its proposed amendments to the original text on Thursday of last week, 15 June. Voting took place on an amendment-by-amendment basis and did not conclude due to the time constraint. The debate will resume on 27 June. Both the agriculture and fisheries committees have voted not to support the regulation. It is our position, as a Government, that we hope to see the Parliament now move in line with the position of the Council because the position of the Council is one that we can support.

As previously outlined, Ireland remains supportive of the ambition and the principles underpinning the proposed regulation. However, the challenge involved in meeting the ambition proposed remains very significant, as we acknowledge. It includes the extremely tight timeframes for the quantification of targets and measures, for the preparation of a national restoration plan and for the delivery of targets. There will be a need for a considerable amount of scientific data collection, collation and analysis, including emerging information from the land use review, and the resources required for preparing, implementing and monitoring the national restoration plan are not currently in place and would need to be put in place.

This issue has some way to run yet. The European Council has agreed a position and we hope the Parliament will move in line with that. We support the position that the Council has adopted because Ireland was very much part of, and helped to shape the outcome of, those discussions.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

I thank the Minister for his reply. The Government is not being truthful to the farmers. It is not telling them what is needed or what is going to happen. Earlier this year, the Government agreed that farmers would have to cut their emissions by 25% and said this would be achievable. The Government should tell us what it is going to do and what farmers have to do because farmers want to know what they have to do. Farmers are already sequestering carbon and they are getting no credit for that. How can the Government say that farmers must cut production and cut their emissions when the Government does not know how much emissions they are already sequestering? That is the crucial point. The Government does not know what they are sequestering and it does not give a damn, apart from putting farmers under pressure by telling them they will have to rewet their lands and cull their cows.

The Government is ambivalent about the truth. When I asked the Tánaiste over 12 months ago, he went mad, he went wild, and he said that I was making it up - I read it myself. Here we are again, and the Government still will not tell the farmers what they have to do, only that they must cut production, while at the same time they are sequestering way more carbon than they are emitting.

Deputy Michael Collins

The farmers know the truth.

Deputy Michael McGrath

To be honest, I would be more optimistic than the Deputy. I recently visited the Farm Zero C project, with which Deputy Michael Collins will be very familiar, in Shinagh, Bandon, where the four west Cork co-ops have come together to develop, on a commercial basis, a farm that is environmentally sustainable. They took us through all of the different aspects of what they are doing - testing different feedstuffs, changing and reducing the nature of the fertiliser, experimenting with multispecies forms of swards and different grass types, and so on. They are making incredible progress and doing it on a commercially viable basis. I have no doubt that with the support of Science Foundation Ireland, Teagasc and all of the partners who are working very closely with the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, his Department and the stakeholders – the farm organisations themselves and the individual farmers - we will chart a way through this.

It is important to say that the latest text that has been agreed provides for very significant flexibility. There will now be a process of engagement between the Minister and the sector to make sure that what we signed up to is achievable, is in Ireland's interests and recognises the strategic importance of agriculture to this country and that we already have a sustainable system of food production here, which will continue long into the future.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

What about food security and the increased cost of food?