Tillage Sector: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2025-10-15
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Michael Fitzmaurice (II), Roscommon-Galway

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this. Whether people come from an area that engaged in tillage, it is awfully important. Whether people are in sucklers, sheep, dairy or whatever, the people who grow the tillage to get the straw are ferociously important. We have a decision to make. Let us look at the prices this year. What is being given under the protein aid scheme is a good subsidy, but in fairness to the people who are growing barley, wheat or oats, it is a totally different game. They are taking a bad price.
Let us look at the playing field. This is the big question that has to be addressed. We have decided to sign up to deals with third countries that have different terms and conditions for growing their product. It is as simple as that. We should give a level playing field to everyone. The other countries are able to genetically modify and use all that craic and Europe will take in their grain, whereas in Europe farmers cannot do that, and rightly so. Farmers have to grow their product but they are at a disadvantage and we should reward people for doing things right. The figures will stand up and the Government TDs have given them. We have lost 40% in 40 years. The fact is that if we do not listen to the tillage sector and if we do not sort it out, it will end up getting smaller and smaller because the Minister and everyone else here knows that the pressure on land if people are renting it, be it from the dairy man or some other person who wants it for other uses, is ferocious at the moment. No more land was made lately as far as I know, so the pressure is on.
Who will lose out? It is those in that most vulnerable sector, which will be under pressure. That is who will lose out. We in the Parliament and the Government have to decide whether we will save that sector and increase its productivity. Let us look at the climate targets we dream about and what we will achieve by 2030 in all the different sectors. We aim to increase tillage, as if everyone were going to pull out a plough tomorrow. That will not happen, but the reality is if we do not give incentives, we will not have the sector. We have to decide whether we want it. It is ferociously important as a sector. Even in the Minister's area, it is huge. West of Ireland trucks go up to bring down the straw every year. It is ferociously important for the west. It is not that a huge amount of tillage is done in the west, but we get that product and if people listen to the figures, what is it worth?
The people who grow distillers grain and so forth need to be looked after as well. I call on the drinks companies to step up to the mark on that because if we keep beating at people they will get out of the sector after a while and it is very hard to get people back to a thing. This year, tillage farmers will get the same or a small bit more than what the then Minister, Deputy McConalogue announced last year. That is not new money. They had the same feel for that money last year, but no new money is coming down the road for them. If we want to help those people, we have to set it out. If it will be in the next budget, the Minister should say what it will do. It is no good for any of us to make promises during an election campaign and then not deliver what we say we will. We need to make sure those people are helped out as much as possible.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-10-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:13+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-15