An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Dail Éireann — 2023-03-21
============================================================

Mattie McGrath (IND), Tipperary

For a number of weeks I have been asking at the Business Committee for a debate on the sheep sector. In many areas of agriculture, including sheep, pigs and now even the calves, there is a huge pressure on farmers with the cost of inputs for materials such as fertiliser. There is a constant berating and demonising of our farming community. I remind the House that farming families have looked after this country very well through the decades since the inception of the State. There is a constant demonisation, downgrading and blackguarding by reports that identify farmers as being not good people to look after the environment, which is totally untrue. We need a debate in this House on those issues. We need to respect the farmers and the farm families of Ireland and what they produce.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-03-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-03-21