Before the adjournment I was saying that most Irish politicians have in the past adopted a low and critical attitude to the Common Agricultural Policy and to farmers in general. Rarely if ever outside this House is the Common Agricultural Policy criticised. This uncritical attitude has led to a lack of an agreed regional policy, dear food, large food surpluses that are expensive to store as Deputy Stagg commented, and, above all, lopsided agricultural development. This means Irish efforts are not concentrated on the development, regional or social funds or on the other important mechanisms and policies necessary for the country as a whole, but have concentrated on the Common Agricultural Policy which is a mistake and has resulted in many lost opportunities.
How many times have we heard in debates on agriculture in this House that the Common Agricultural Policy functions as a regional policy? That is nonsense because that description is simplistic, inaccurate and confusing. The Common Agricultural Policy will have to change and our perception of it will also have to change because the other 80 per cent of our population—the non-farmers —must be considered. In other words, financial aid to agriculture must be measured not from the point of view of putting more money into farmers' pockets but from a much wider perspective. The sooner this kind of expensive and selfish madness is ended the better for all of us.
No one can deny that the Common Agricultural Policy has created costly and unwanted food surpluses and has damaged Third World agriculture. It is also clear that the Common Agricultural Policy has served the interests of agricultural big business, has encouraged environmentally damaging farming techniques and has led to uneven economic development throughout the EC and throughout this country. In this connection, there should be an opportunity for us to cash in on Ireland's increasingly unmerited image among Europeans of being clean, unspoilt, unpolluted, etc. The promotion of agricultural industry based on the image of organic farming would be very important in this context.
The fact that agriculture accounts for two thirds of the EC budget is testimony to a gravy train out of financial control, and also reflects the relatively low level of public spending by the EC on regional social policies. The recent increases in "structural expenditure" to tackle unemployment and regional under-development agreed at the Brussels Summit is a poor response given the scale of the economic and social problems in Ireland and throughout the EC.
As a people and a Community we must face reality sooner or later. For a start we will have to face the fact that the Common Agricultural Policy will have to be drastically reformed. The Common Agricultural Policy was originally set up to make European agriculture more efficient and productive and to bring order and stability to the marketplace. What has happened? We now have expensive butter and beef mountains, overflowing wine and milk lakes and this year every man, woman and child in the EC will have to pay £110 in higher food prices and £59 in higher taxes to keep the Common Agricultural Policy going. These figures are worth concentrating on.
There is an old saying that there are more ways of choking a cat than pouring hot butter down his throat, but in a world where millions are starving and many more millions are on the poverty line, EC wine is being turned into paint and EC butter into lipstick as a direct result of the Common Agricultural Policy.
Our farmers must diversify their products to meet the changing needs of European markets. At present we have only a mere toehold on this market and that is not good enough. Our survival as a people could very well depend on far more enlightened and effective responses from our farmers and their organisations. The importation of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of food, including a wide variety of vegetables, is a continual scandal which we cannot justify. There is no reason we should not grow our own food, including vegetables.
In regard to taxation, farmers always say they are willing to pay their fair share of taxes but not just yet. As long as I have been in politics — for the last 25 years—the farmers, most of whose leaders come from the Golden Vale area where I come from, stand up and say, "Yes, we will pay our taxes but not just yet". No matter what scheme we try to devise for them, they will find some argument, some disagreement, some loophole. That attitude must go. The farmers must play their part in the financing of this country. They have got away with murder for far too long. The land tax seems to be the fairest way and the progressive way to impose taxes on them. I appeal to the Minister concerned to use whatever influence and power he has to push and force the farmers into the tax net. We cannot continue to subsidise them as we have been doing. They admit they are paying £30 million to accountants to doctor their books. How much better it would be for all of us if they paid £15 million which I believe they owe— not £30 million — to the Exchequer directly. We would all benefit from that. I hope the Minister when replying will address himself to the question of taxing farmers because for too long every politician has evaded it.