I appreciate the fact that the Minister has attended personally this evening, given his very onerous schedule and the fact that he has just come back from Luxembourg. I congratulate him on his role in the conclusion of the Common Agricultural Policy reform package and on the fact that it has now been legally brought into effect, as I understand from yesterday's proceedings.
We have just discussed potatoes and it must be a record for the House to discuss in succession two matters relating to tillage. That in itself makes the evening a noteworthy one. One of the problems with the potato industry has always been that the cost per tonne produced is uncompetitive compared to other countries. That is a basic problem. It is a huge lost opportunity that we could produce a variety of the quality of cara and not be able to exploit it to our national advantage. Some other countries seem to have been able to exploit it more effectively than we have.
My motion refers to the need to establish for Ireland differing regional reference yields for winter and spring cereals under the terms of the Common Agricultural Policy reform package just concluded. My particular concern in raising this important matter is the effect of the reform on the cereal growers in the country and on agri-industry associated with cereal growing.
Cereal growers — I have to declare a vested interest here as I am one myself — frequently feel they are the neglected sector of Irish agriculture — I presume the potato growers feel the same — and that their interests are something sacrificed to win concessions for livestock farmers. I recognise the importance of the livestock sector within our agricultural economy and our economy as a whole, but it is worth recording that grain accounts for about £200 million of farm output and for many thousands of jobs on the output side in the handling and processing of the product.
I have no objection in principle to the establishment of regional reference yields, even to the extent of treating the country as a single region for the purposes of determining the level of compensation to be received by growers. Multiplying the reference yield by the standard payments agreed by the EC will give us the rate of compensation which will apply to cereal growing. I welcome some of the changes that have been made in the packaging and in particular the removal of the upper limit of 230 tonnes.
For the average Irish cereal grower, in the average Irish field, producing the average Irish crop — if such a person exists — the effects of the Common Agricultural Policy reform package will be neutral. By 1995-96 that person should be in much the same position as he or she is today. The trouble is that this average person is very difficult to find.
I am sure the Minister is aware of the national benefit, if there is a single reference figure, of having that figure as high as is possible. However, my principal concern relates to the effect of adopting a single overall reference yield for different types of growers. On the grounds of pure equity, it is very important to have separate figures for winter and for spring cereals. That is a view widely shared within the industry by bodies like IGAMA and the IFA, and it has been put forward at the conference which was run on Common Agricultural Policy reform by the Department. Unless this is done, efficient high yielding winter cereal growers will lose out and low yielding spring cereal growers will benefit. It should be the objective of the EC and of national policy to endeavour to see that as many producers as possible benefit.
Ideally, each crop should have a reference yield, with separate figures for winter wheat, winter barley, winter oats and for their spring counterparts. I accept that that would create enormous difficulties; it would reduce distortions to an absolute minimum, but at the very least a distinction should be made between winter cereals and spring cereals as individual groups. This would not have the effect of increasing national outputs of cereals because I realise that would not be desirable. It would be equally undesirable to reduce national output. I am convinced that a single reference yield will have that effect for cereal crops and that there will be an undesirable effect of reducing output and returning us to overdependence on a single crop — and that single crop is spring barley.
I do not believe that would be in the overall national interest. It would not be helpful to the pig and poultry producers or to the objectives of filling our needs from our own resources on the island as a whole. A lot of progress has been made in recent years in cereal growing technology and that would be lost. We are competitive in yield and cost per tonne compared to most of Europe and we should not lose these benefits. Our competitiveness has been highlighted in the recent NESC report on Common Agricultural Policy reform.
There are precedents for adopting the type of approach I am advocating. There are already differential yields, as far as I am aware, for winter and spring oil seed rape and there is a separate regional yield for French maize. Even if there were no precedent, equity would dictate that we should be able to argue a strong case for having winter and spring cereals treated separately. In passing, I also support the view that the quota should apply to the individual and that it should be a producer's quota rather than a landowner's quota. That view would probably be shared by the Minister.
I also stress the urgency of finalising this matter for cereal growers because we are just a fortnight away from harvesting winter barley and already those of us who are winter cereal producers are having to make decisions about how we are going to conduct our cropping schedule for the coming year. That makes the matter one of urgency. Therefore, I strongly urge the Minister and his officials to press to have separate regional reference yields for winter and spring cereals so that, as far as possible, distortions can be eliminated and the balance and competitiveness of cereal production in Ireland can be maintained.
