I thank the Deputy for the question. The 2021 Power report found that the greyhound industry provides and supports considerable employment both directly and indirectly across the Irish economy. It is estimated that in 2019, the industry supported over 4,000 full-time and part-time jobs in the economy. In addition, there are over 6,000 active greyhound owners. The total number of people deriving economic benefit from the sector is estimated at over 10,000. The Department provides dedicated financial support under th…

The reason that we are providing funding is that there has been a structure and support in place for the greyhound racing industry for many years now. It is particularly important to support it. It is something that we are continuing to do. The structure and the oversight of the industry is also important. The legislative underpinning of the whole sector was significantly changed and strengthened through the Greyhound Racing Act 2019 that we introduced in the Dáil and the Seanad. Going forward, while the provision …

The public funding goes into our racetracks and funding prize money, which helps to support and underpin the industry and the jobs in the industry. The funding also goes into welfare measures and supports the welfare of greyhounds. As the Deputy said, without the funding the greyhound racing industry would be very much undermined. I am aware the Deputy has no problem with doing away with the industry altogether. He is not a big advocate of industry or business in general. I know that he would like to see the indust…

The Government has done more for farm families, coastal communities and rural Ireland than any previous Government. Despite Sinn Féin having access to its magic money tree before the most recent general election, its manifesto for rural Ireland and agriculture was by far the weakest of those of any of the political parties. Since we have entered government, there has not been a single original thought on this sector from that party or, indeed, from the Opposition benches as a whole.

Meanwhile, the Government has delivered in excess of €5 billion for farmers and fishers in direct and indirect supports.

Building on that, we have created a new Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, that will deliver €10 billion for the farm families of Ireland. We have delivered a 50% increase in Pillar 2 funding for CAP supports. We are delivering an agri-environmental scheme that will give farmers €10,500. We have increased the supports to our suckler sector to €250 per cow, compared with €90 under the previous scheme. We have increased fivefold the support for our organic sector, while also delivering support for the tillage and sheep…

The average price of a house in Northern Ireland-----

So much for Sinn Féin policies.

The Deputy is referring to the CAP rules for next year. We are engaging with the European Commission in terms of getting our national CAP plan adopted by the Commission. No country's plan has yet been adopted. I am very hopeful that Ireland will be one of the first to do so because of the really good progress we are making. This will bring the clarity that is required. Supporting the tillage sector and tillage farmers is a key priority of the Government. Last year, for the first time ever, I introduced a strong co-…

We also introduced the tillage incentive scheme this year. This pays €400 per hectare for each additional hectare of tillage grown. We will see 200,000 extra tonnes of grain grown as a result of that. This is a reflection of how this Government is backing tillage farmers in this country.

Part of that will involve bringing clarity on the CAP plan for next year as soon as possible.

I welcome an important step in this legislation coming before the House. It is a crucial step in ensuring that homeowners in my own county and many other counties can get their lives back on track and try to remove themselves from the nightmare that they have been living for well over a decade. Like every other person in Donegal, I have neighbours, family and friends affected. If someone is not affected, he or she has a brother or sister, mother or father, or a son or daughter affected. That is how pervasive, unfor…

I thank Deputy Michael Collins for the question. I am taken by his change of approach to the decommissioning fund. He constantly opposed it in the House previously. I note he is seeking for it to be----

I see the Deputy is supporting the fund now and seeking an early date.

We are engaged with the European Commission in terms of getting approval for the scheme. I hope to have approval soon and to have the scheme up and running as quickly as possible. There is a challenging situation at the moment for fuel and the cost is impacting on fishermen. I am meeting all fisheries representative organisations next week to discuss this issue. I have been in close contact with them. The Deputy will be aware that at their request, I have introduced two three-month tie-up schemes, which have been w…

I thank Deputy Carthy for the question. As he is aware, the unfair trading practices enforcement authority was established by my Department in April of last year when I signed a statutory instrument transposing the EU unfair trading practices, UTP, directive directly into Irish law. I want to assure the Deputy that this enforcement authority has been assigned all the necessary legal powers, including to investigate complaints from suppliers of agricultural and food products and to initiate legal proceedings for bre…

I have been advocating for this since my time in opposition. Indeed, I put it forward as part of our platform at the last general election. I welcome the recent support from Sinn Féin for the principle of the establishment of an office to ensure fairness and transparency. It is important that we see the Oireachtas agriculture committee do that pre-legislative scrutiny. I look forward to a robust and thorough engagement in relation to that. It is important to outline that prices cannot be set. The market determines …

This is a quite unique initiative that the Government and I are bringing forward with the objective of ensuring that primary producers, in particular farmers and fishers, get respect and that they get paid properly a fair margin of what is available in the marketplace for their massive amount of work over one or two years to produce an animal for market. As a country that exports 90% of the food we produce, it is the international marketplace that determines the final outcome. We must try to optimise that in every …

Growing our land under organics and continuing to build a very exciting sector here is a key priority of mine and the Minister of State, Senator Hackett. The current programme for Government target is to align the utilisable agricultural area under organic production in Ireland with the EU average of 7.5%. A budget of €21 million was allocated to the organic farming scheme in 2022, which is an increase of €5 million from the previous year. This allocation supports the 1,734 contracts currently in the organic farmin…

There has been engagement with other Departments on that issue and there will continue to be. The 7.5% target was set when the three Government parties agreed the programme for Government. It represents a significant increase-----