Agriculture Schemes
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
============================================================

David Maxwell (FG), Cavan-Monaghan

I suppose every TD's office is getting phone calls from farmers. Farmers are losing out. Over the past 18 months, the price of cattle has increased and that is good for Irish farming. In one case, a farmer reckoned his animal was worth €5,000 in the mart and he got the €3,000. It is a big loss. Cattle prices could drop, though we hope they will not. Going forward, can we look at a scheme whereby, if prices have increased and they stay at that level for six months or so, farmers will be compensated? Never mind the monetary loss for a farmer, it is the emotional loss that a farmer feels when a cow or bullock goes down with TB, the herd is restricted. It affects the whole farm. Is there something we can look at, on the side of the compensation, when prices remain high over a number of months?

---

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/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29