Cabinet Committees Dail Éireann — 2026-02-10 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central Food Harvest 2020 was the first major strategic document which set the roadmap for the development of the food industry. I think CAP and the budget are key but also the need to get into a dialogue pathway with the organisations. I would encourage the organisations to respond positively to the correspondence that the Minister issued to them today in respect of those issues. In my view, that cannot happen quickly enough. I will come back to that issue. Deputy Cahill raised the issue of TB. It is a very significant issue. The Government believes its efforts to tackle the ongoing challenge of bovine TB is having a positive effect. The herd incidence has started to reduce in recent months. In June the Government agreed to introduce additional measures to the bovine TB programme following extensive stakeholder agreement. The bovine TB action plan was launched in September underpinned by scientific research and veterinary expertise. The aim of the action plan is to reset the programme in the context of putting in place measures necessary to tackle the current disease situation. Those measures are targeting both transmission between wildlife and cattle, which does happen, and transmission between cattle. There is a heavy emphasis on vaccination in the action plan. The budget has also been substantially increased to €157 million this year, 2026, to focus on driving down it through the implementation of the measures laid out in the action plan itself. I will talk to the Minister in the context of what Deputy Cahill asked for in terms of whether something can be done about the compensation levels that farmers are getting at the moment and the degree to which a substantial number are out of pocket. Nothing is more devastating than to be told a herd has TB. I think I dealt with Deputy Smith's issue. Without question, we have a top-class food industry and we have got to protect it. The issue more generally is that the global supply chain is key here. We are not an island on our own. It is complex. If we want to supply markets in Europe, and people are buying our food in Europe, or Middle Eastern or Asian companies or whatever, they too will set terms that will govern the basis on which we sell them food and very often contingency of supply is one of those conditions, so this is not simple and we need to be careful of the message we are sending. So far, we have penetrated markets all over the world - in Asia, America and Europe - because of the quality of our food, including our dairy produce, beef, poultry and fish. We want to maintain that level of high-quality exports. In response to Deputy O'Meara, I will talk to the Minister about accessibility to new technology. He said the log in method in that authentication process is too difficult and it is causing enormous problems. I will talk to the Minister in respect of this and revert to the Deputy. We will see what we can do on the funding. The funding may be stretched to cover a pothole that would cover Deputy Cleere but we will certainly do our level best to stretch it. Deputy Byrne raised a key point. We want generational succession to be part of the Common Agricultural Policy. Our concern at the moment is that, as drafted, the seven-year budget is about 20% below what the previous seven-year allocation was. That is the issue at the moment and we should be focusing on that collectively with the farming community and Government because people will be quite annoyed if we do not try to improve that somewhat. I am concerned about it from my discussions, last week in particular. We have a lot of work to do on it and we also have to work with other member states to try and get a higher budget for CAP. That would include within it proposals on farm succession, which is a big issue. It is about certainty and clarity, which is why the derogation was important. Young farmers want certainty. It also the adoption of new technology. I suspect it is a lifestyle issue in that people want a life as well. Farming is a 24-7 occupation with a lot of responsibilities. There is a lot of bureaucracy, obligations and pressure. Therefore, we need to create that roadmap for young people showing that there is a future and viability above all else for young farmers. That will be key. Deputy Tóibín suggested I would be in line for the Booker Prize. I wish I could ever be as good a writer as to get the Booker Prize. --- 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/2026-02-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-10