Martin Kenny

77. Deputy Martin Kenny asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the position regarding his Department’s response to the outbreak of bluetongue; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20931/26]

I would like an update on the position regarding bluetongue. As we know, unfortunately, the disease has been detected at a number of sites throughout the country. Testing is ongoing. This situation is having an impact on trade, particularly the live export trade. I would like to get an update on where the Minister and the Department are on this, and the progress that has been made. Today, we are t…

I appreciate that a lot of work has been done in respect of this, and that the Department is doing a lot of testing to try to ensure we detect the places where this has arisen. The Minister gave a list of counties where bluetongue has been detected. Are these antibodies that were a consequence of previous infections going back to last autumn or summer, or is any of this potentially a new spread of…

A historical case.

I understand that vaccines are approved and available but it will cost farmers to vaccinate. Will there be any assistance in that regard, as there could be quite an outlay for farmers? TB is the other big vaccination programme we have in the country at the moment for animal disease and wildlife is obviously a serious issue. If bluetongue becomes a disease that we have to deal with across the Stat…

83. Deputy Martin Kenny asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will provide an update on CAP negotiations; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20854/26]

The previous question dealt with the CAP budget to some extent. A number of issues are very concerning for Irish farmers. Obviously, the budget being reduced is the big one. That is a serious problem because we need to see a decent budget in place for CAP to maintain productivity and to ensure we protect the family farm. The Minister mentioned generational renewal in a previous reply. There is tal…

I thank the Minister. I appreciate we are at an early stage in negotiations and they have to take a route through all of this. The budget, as I said at the outset, is the key and what most farmers are concerned about, in that we see the budget being eroded. In every CAP negotiation for the past number of decades, we have seen that happen and that needs to be very firmly fought against to ensure we…

That is a very retrograde step and I would caution against that type of move.

Then explain it to me.

I accept that there is a proposed increase in the budget for generational renewal. The issue for many farmers is that, when programmes were put in place for them in the past, such as schemes to pension them off, these included an exclusion order. They could no longer have anything to do with the farm. They were out of it altogether and had to stay clear of it. That was a very bad proposal to put f…

Deputy Healy-Rae supported our motion in 2019.

I support Deputy Stanley on this issue. It is obviously something that has taken up a huge amount of time and energy for everyone involved. It is positive we are at a stage where there is at least the bones of a resolution in place. The key issue is that people who are involved in State boards have a responsibility to adhere to the codes of conduct or practice that are in place. The review of all …

The reason we are here tonight is because for the past two-to-three weeks we have been listening to people the length and breadth of the country, as I am sure the Tánaiste has as well, who are under serious pressure because of the vast increase in the cost of their home heating oil but also of their fuel when they want to go to work and whatever they want to do in life. That has an impact. It has …

People are very annoyed it has taken so long for the Government to come to this situation that the Tánaiste is now able to stand here this evening and say the Government intends to do something. Up until now the Government would not even acknowledge that it intended to do anything. All it intended to do was examine the situation and monitor it. What people hear when the Government says that is tha…

That just seems a little bit-----

It just seems a little bit rich that the Government could do nothing but monitor it until this evening and now that we are here and we are actually going to produce something that will have an effect for people and will reduce the tax rate that people have to pay on their fuel and home heating oil, all of a sudden the Government has managed to find the road to Damascus. The Government has turned a…

As the Minister and Ministers of State will be aware, we have a contraction of services across rural Ireland, and it is not just the post offices. It is other services as well. All these things go hand in glove. Across my rural community, I have seen many post offices over the past decade close. It removes that central piece of contact from the rural community. The Minister talked about the servic…

Five people are occupying the offices of Bord Bia at the moment. They do not want to be there; they want this situation to be resolved. In fairness, the Irish Farmers Association, IFA, in recent days put forward a proposal to try to resolve it. The IFA has offered a suggestion to the effect that the chairperson of Bord Bia step aside while a full review of the situation takes place. Will the Gover…

Deputy Mac Lochlainn spoke about the "big five" and the big corporations that are out there, which have such power. They seem to have more power than countries and certainly seem to have more power than Ireland. That seems to be what the outcome of this is. We also have to recognise that their role in all this has brought us to where we are. It is these very corporations and their greed, where the…

We need to see an action plan. With due respect to the Minister of State, that action plan has to be driven by the very top of Government.

This has gone on for almost two weeks. The point was made earlier that it is a battle a day for the parents of children with special needs. All of us in this House know that because all of us are being contacted every day of the week by families who are trying to get an assessment of need, a place in a school or an appointment somewhere in the health service for their children but cannot get them.…

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." As the Minister of State will know, across the country, the issues facing family farms are very difficult for many people involved in farming. It has been a tradition in Ireland that most people came from a family farm. The mother, the father and maybe some of the children were involved in farm activity for a major portion of their lives and perh…

I was just reading through the Minister of State's list in his statement. "The work ahead is substantial", it reads. It refers to making farming "attractive to young people". The difficulty is that young people do not see a way of getting into farming because an awful lot of them cannot afford to buy the land when it comes up, if there is land beside them, or even to lease land because the bigger …

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this Bill today. I have long been a proponent of remote working. I attended a conference in Tubbercurry in 2018 that was organised by Grow Remote. It was one of the first conferences it held about organising work in this way. It had another one the year later in Athlone. I attended both of them because I saw the opportunity that remote working offered,…