Examination of Witnesses(Questions 160-179)
MR JOE
WALSH TD
TUESDAY 3 DECEMBER 2002
160. Fischler's biblical text, as it were, is
to say in the last WTO round we were always dragged kicking and
screaming behind. The Mid-Term Review gives us an opportunity
to get ahead of the game and to start determining the agenda instead
of being dragged along behind it. When we were in Brussels we
heard some criticism saying that if we needed this to keep the
Americans happy and the WTO he was setting out the wrong store,
and it was not the store calculated to appeal to people and he
should have been saying there are much more internal very good
European reasons why we need to reform. It is generally accepted
that one effect of the Fischler proposals and the decoupling would
be to push payments towards a Green Box, and you alluded to this.
Do you think that by these colour changes, shifting amber to green
and blue to green as it were, we are likely to get through the
WTO round more easily? Are we going to be more radical in looking
at those supports which do relate to production and which are
genuinely decoupled from production? If you were on Desert Island
Discs and you had to choose the Bible and Shakespeare and one
more book, what would be the three key elements you would want
to retain as a core of the Common Agricultural Policy with a constituency
of Irish farmers?
(Mr Walsh) Support for multifunctional agriculture,
support for family farming and if there is a cost in that we feel
that is a good investment for the reasons I outlined, because
otherwise you are going to be supporting the second pillar which
is community-type development, and we are not sure if a lot of
those communities schemes are quite as good as keeping the farmers
themselves in the countryside. The countryside is important. In
decoupling, for example, we feel you would still need livestock
in rural areas otherwise it would go wild and become completely
overgrown, so the key thing for us is to support family farming
as we know it. How you best get a result from the WTO is a matter
of timing and tactics because, in relation to colour changes,
if you shift from the blue to the green box with decoupling, the
definition of the green box becomes terribly important. You are
not quite sure if the Americans will accept your decoupled payments
because there would still be some production in rural areas or
they would say, "This is not total decoupling because you
are still going to have some livestock"—obviously you
are going to have some livestock. So the shrewdness of the negotiators
in their timing and tactics is going to be important and I visited
Washington recently and spoke to Ann Veneman, the Secretary of
State there, and they were far more interested and concerned and
wanted to know what Europe thought about GMOs and a whole lot
of issues like that, and we talked about production, and that
was their fixation. They had got their farm bill, of course, through
the Congress and in place and they got that through before the
WTO got down in earnest to it, so what we have to do is decide
what are the best tactics, and the next important meeting is in
March of the WTO in Geneva, and then we go on to Mexico in September
of next year. So it is all there to play for yet, but our bottom
line is we believe support for farming and agriculture and retaining
the family farm is well worthwhile.
161. You said earlier in shorthand that decoupling
was alive and that modulation was a bit groggy, as it were. In
the UK it has become now almost commonplace to say that we need
to move from production-related subsidies to helping farmers deliver
something called the public good, by which people then cite illustrations
which usually turn out to be environmental in nature. Is there
any similar debate in Ireland at all or is this notion a peculiarly
British notion which you then attribute to everybody else, as
usual?
(Mr Walsh) I think the main debate in Ireland is about
the future, or if there is any future in farming. Traditionally
in Ireland there has been attachment to the land, and land owners
were always very proud of the fact that their farm was in the
family for five or six or seven generations. In the last decade
more and more farmers are finding it more difficult to stay on
the farm and do traditional farming, because their peers are off
working for the American companies in IT and pharmaceuticals and
so on, and the antisocial lifestyle working seven days a week
and weekends on the farm means younger people are just looking
at the options when they finish their education, and more and
more of them are taking the option of going into a five day week
with weekends off, regular holidays and so on, and that is the
big question in Ireland. The general society and community I think
are relatively happy supporting farming and agriculture that produces
good, healthy, nutritional, safe food, and they are prepared to
make some sacrifices in order to achieve that.
Mr Wiggin
162. Could I ask about the decoupling of headage
payments? To what extent will the European Commission's proposals
for the beef sector help to bring about a more balanced market
situation, and to what extent will the removal of the link between
production and subsidy benefits benefit the grass-based beef rearing
systems?
(Mr Walsh) The European Union feel that there is substantial
overproduction in cattle and beef in the European Union and that
decoupling will reduce this surplus and make the whole cattle
and beef industry more competitive and have greater balance in
the market. Our problem with the proposals is as follows: when
we say "By how much?", or "What is the ceiling
going to be", they do not know because the European Union
has done no study on the impact of decoupling. Again, in discussing
this matter with Commissioner Fischler in Dublin, he said, "Oh,
but we are about to have a study in this regard and Missouri University
using the FAPRI system are doing such a study", and I met
my colleague from Northern Ireland last week in Brussels and they
already have their FAPRI study done. We have in the Republic economists
from FAPRI looking at the likely effects of the proposals and
it suggests that beef would be reduced by 15% and sheep production
by 12%. I do not know in the UK whether you have had such a study
of the proposals done or not, but we fear, firstly, that in the
longer term with those direct payments to beef farmers the rest
of society and net contributors will say, "Why should we
be paying farmers for literally producing nothing?", and,
secondly, would decoupling devastate or have a negative impact
on our processing industry because some people suggest that if
you are going to be paid once a year your direct payments, if
there is little or no profit in finishing beef why should you
finish beef at all? So if production is ceased, then your processing
industry is going to collapse because there will not be enough
input in it. So we feel it was entirely inappropriate for the
Commission to land on the table a decoupling proposal without
an impact study. Until we have a clearer picture, and these studies
are being done at present, it is impossible to have an answer
but we would hope to have those answers, I would expect, in the
next month or so.
163. To what extent do you think milk quotas
are compatible with the Common Agricultural Policy that wants
more competitive and market-orientated farmers? How would you
like to see the dairy sector reformed?
(Mr Walsh) My former colleague, Ray MacSharry, who
was commissioner in the early 90s, was involved in the introduction
of quotas and the super levy—
Chairman
164. And I was the Minister at the time!
(Mr Walsh) The proposal went down very badly in Ireland
and he was told that he would be unwelcome back from the Council
meeting but, lo and behold, in the last decade, farmers are becoming
quite comfortable with the quota system on the basis that even
though they are stuck with a ceiling on the quota and especially
the smaller and younger farmers are quite unhappy that they have
inadequate quota, and all the time in my clinics people come and
say, "Is there any chance of getting a few more gallons of
milk quota?", and I say, "Look, we have quota, we are
stuck with it, we cannot get you any more. We will try some restructuring
schemes and so on to see if we can get some milk channelled into
you", but it has not been very positive. Nonetheless, overall,
the supply control system of quotas with a relatively high price
is the more attractive option, otherwise we get roughly one pound
a gallon in old money from it, depending on the fat and protein
and the constituents of it. In competitor countries that do not
have a quota system production is about half that, around 50p
or 50 cents, in New Zealand or Australia, for example. Some of
them can produce at 40 cents; others may be up to 60; but on balance
it is about half the price. If the price dairy farmers receive
for milk is halved it would be devastating for the dairy producers
because an awful lot would become bankrupt and go out of business.
I was out visiting a dairy yesterday up by the border—Abbott
Laboratories, they make infant formula and dairy ingredients—and
some of their suppliers come from Northern Ireland and some from
southern, and in southern Ireland the average farm size is about
30-32 cows. In Northern Ireland it is about 100, much higher,
because there is free sale of quota, but to get back to quota
as a mechanism or as an economic instrument of supply control,
we support the quota system because it does limit production and
it allows farmers to make a reasonable income on that.
165. Are you in favour of decoupling?
(Mr Walsh) That is a very good question. Decoupling
has a number of shortcomings and one of them is, as I said, into
the future it would be hard enough to get net contributors to
say, "Look, I am going to support farmers in some other region
or some other country for literally doing nothing", so it
may be all right for a number of years but it is hard to see it
in the long term. Secondly, we do not have any impact studies
yet of the real effect of decoupling. When we get that we would
then see to what extent it is going to affect our processing industry
and the manufacturing area.
Mr Jack
166. One of the things that is intriguing me
about your line of argument so far is when you are talking about
the justification of the Common Agricultural Policy, even in a
modified form, you put a strong emphasis on the survival of the
family farm, and you have just given us a strong defence of milk
quotas, and yet hedged around that is an understanding of the
increase in competitiveness of the world of agriculture and, indeed,
the food industry. Why have you not talked about methods within
the reform package that would improve the efficiency of your farming
industry, because one of the arguments that I have with my farmers
is that I represent a constituency on the north-west coast of
England and we have all the natural advantages in the world like
you have, lots of pasture—we ought to be the best dairy
producers in the whole of Europe—yet my farmers run a mile
from the thought that they will give up quotas because it is a
nice, cosy world. What do you think is the best route for survival?
A bolstered one with lots of nice payments, rural development
plans and family farms, or a properly efficient farming industry?
(Mr Walsh) I think farmers have become quite efficient
over the last decade or so. In Ireland, leading into the new millennium
in 1999, I asked some economists and other experts to do a scenario
for the first decade of the new millennium, and they called it
the 2010 report, and the study talked very much of improving efficiencies,
as you say, and contributing to safe production of food and so
on, but at the end of the day all of the pressure towards efficiencies
and liberalisation of trade meant a reduction in the number of
farmers, because when the margin gets tight the only way you can
have a decent income is to increase the scale of production, and
that study showed that in Ireland at any rate we have about 150,000
farmers, and at the end of the decade it suggested that commercial
farmers would be down to 20,000 from 150,000. So what would happen
to the rest of them? If you could retain them in rural areas and
get some jobs out to the villages and towns you could retain them
at least in the regions and a good number of them, we thought
maybe about 60,000, would remain as part-time farmers. The difficulty
about that is part-time farmers would be arguably less efficient
because one or both spouses would be at work, and they do what
is closer to hobby farming than efficient farming. There is no
getting away from efficiency and efficiency of production and
getting the marketplace to return the highest possible amount,
but with the obligations on farmers now, on food safety and animal
welfare there is a very high cost involved and without large-scale
operation it is very, very difficult to make a family farm income.
I have a study at present on the processing industry as well which
should be out before Christmas and there can be efficiencies there
as well. I know in Ireland the more efficient dairy farmers can
produce milk for about 45p and the least efficient about 70-75p,
so there is fat in the system there of about 30p between the more
efficient and the least efficient. Also, we are chaperoning farmers
through our advisory system to encourage them to become more and
more efficient but it is really becoming more difficult because
to get farm labour now in Ireland is nearly impossible because
the old system of somebody working in the local farm has virtually
gone, so the farmers themselves and their spouses are stuck on
the farm all week and all weekend and it is not an easy matter.
167. Can we move on. The Chairman was talking
about decoupling and he asked you the straight question whether
you were in favour of it or not. Let us assume that we move forward
to a decoupled world and there are some requirements for you to
receive your payment particularly in achieving the basic standards
of animal welfare and of environmental requirements. Minister,
you mentioned the words cross-compliance in your earlier remarks.
Do you think that those requirements should be set at some absolute
rock bottom level of standard or should we actually get something
positive? The Chairman mentioned the question of public goods,
environmental goods. We have just done a study on the future of
farming and we struggled to find anybody who could define to us
what this great range of public goods was supposed to be. Nobody
could do so apart from the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds who came with a shopping list to say how many more species
of this, that and the other they wanted. So it has been quite
difficult to decide at what level you set the requirements if
you are ultimately going to receive your decoupled payments.
(Mr Walsh) We put that very question to Mr Fischler
and his reply was that farmers should have the right to farm first
of all and then they should produce products for which there is
a niche market, for example very high quality Angus beef or Hereford
beef or Charolais, whatever the product might be. There is a lack
of definition in the whole matter because if you have a reasonable
amount of production our WTO friends could say, "That is
not really decoupling at all. We are not going to allow this into
the green box because this is out of hand." That is why we
are not totally happy with the proposal on decoupling, because
of a lack of information on what it really means.
168. This is quite an interesting insight into
the generation of policy within the EU. Both the UK and Ireland
have got no real information about the effect of a policy that
has been proposed and yet here we are debating what aspects of
the Mid-Term Review might or might not occur without having any
clear idea of what its effect is going to be. Were you and all
your officials in all these umpteen management groups which meet
behind closed doors in Brussels ever involved in scoping studies
as to what this Mid-Term Review ought to do?
(Mr Walsh) You are absolutely right, when decoupling
was put on the table we were of the view that this literally fell
out of the sky because it is not accompanied by any study or description
or reasonable indicators of what exactly it means and yet this
is the main plank of the reform of the Mid-Term Review. When the
Commission are asked about it they say, "Well look, this
is impertive particularly in view of the forthcoming WTO talks
because it is going to avoid challenge in the WTO and it is going
to take your payments in support of farming from the Blue Box
to the Green Box, therefore avoiding any challenge". That
is as far as we have got. You are right, we are in the dark as
to the impact of one of the main planks of reform.
169. Do you not think that would be a gift to
the French if they are digging their heels in and saying, "We
do not know what this is so we will just say non until
such time as somebody comes and tells us what the effect will
be"? Knowing how long it takes anything in Council to get
through, it is a recipe for spinning this thing out for as long
as possible, is it not?
(Mr Walsh) I mentioned that we already have our study
in draft form which gave us the 15% reduction and the 12%. I know
Northern Ireland have their study because they presented me with
a copy of it last week and I understand that the EU's study will
be ready in January, but that is not giving enough time up to
the critical time in March. So you are right that this thing can
be spun out a fair bit, but we are promised the full study by
January next.
170. You had the option of modulation and of
introducing it. What were your reasons for not going down that
route of trying it as opposed to our toe in the water job?
(Mr Walsh) We are opposed to modulation simply on
the basis that it reduces farmers' incomes by up to 20% and the
money that is derived from that is being shifted to another Pillar
and that Pillar is all very well and it is all for rural development,
but the mechanism for expending that money and investing it is
not clear and at best it would be an increase in spending on programmes
like the LEADER programme and others. The LEADER programme I am
quite familiar with and some of the projects are reasonably good,
some of them will stand on their own in the medium and long term.
My view on the matter is that it is better to put that money directly
into supporting farmers on the farms rather than seeing how we
are going to get on with rural development and LEADER-type schemes.
I totally disagree with a system where you take the money, up
to 20%, off farmers and then decide how to spend it. If Commissioner
Fischler came to us and said, "I have the following ideas
on how you spend this amount of money and here they are . . ."
so be it but if you are going to get the money first and then
decide how to spend it I think that is the wrong way round.
171. He will only get the money if you and the
ministers agree to that. Are you going to be doing a little organising
behind the scenes to try and ensure perhaps a different plan for
the money? Under the current arrangements in the UK we have a
system of spending that money matched by central government funding
within the UK, but obviously that is not the Community's proposed
scheme. At least we do have some handle on where it goes compatible
with our Rural Development Programme which obviously has been
approved by the Commission, but at least we can set the programming
as to where it goes. Does that kind of arrangement have any appeal
to you?
(Mr Walsh) As I said initially, I think that modulation
has virtually gone. I think Commissioner Fischler has more or
less accepted that modulation given that the Heads of Government
agreement is not now going to go ahead, but even if it were to
go ahead in some shape or form, I do not go along with a system
where you shift investment in rural areas from the farmers themselves.
I believe that farmers and the farming community are the best
vehicle for supporting rural communities and rural areas than
any other system we have come across.
Mr Wiggin
172. Why did Ireland choose not to implement
the voluntary modulation scheme in the wake of Agenda 2000? Will
you support the Commission's proposals for compulsory dynamic
modulation?
(Mr Walsh) On the voluntary modulation point, we have
very few farmers with large payments, that is number one. The
average size of a farm in Ireland is 27 hectares. We generally
have relatively small farms compared with the UK. I think the
average size of farm is the UK is about 70 hectares on average,
with a good number of them quite a bit larger than that. In order
to get any reasonable amount of income from voluntary modulation
we have to cut very deep on smaller farmers who are already only
just about in subsistence. In our farm income profiles quite a
substantial number of the smaller farmers are earning on or about
5,000 per annum and if you were to go cutting those
by 20% you would really be causing a great deal of devastation
in rural areas and your return on it by supporting the LEADER-type
of schemes I do not think makes a great deal of sense.
173. How many Irish farmers do you think are
likely to face reductions in direct payments as a result of a
cap of
300,000? Do you agree there should be a cap on the
receipt of direct payments?
(Mr Walsh) I am very glad to say that in my own constituency
of Cork South-West, which is the first one that comes to mind,
we would have none and in the country as a whole it would be in
single figures, I think about four in total. You have a fair number
in the UK. I think you have about 400 that would exceed the
300,000 mark.
Mr Jack
174. Can I just go back to this question of
rural development because the shifting of money from Pillar I
to Pillar II is central to that and in a way you have indicated
your wish to maintain the Irish rural infrastructure principally
through the sustenance of small-scale family farms, but there
is quite a lot of support over here for money to be spent on food
associated activities with farming. You were talking earlier about
farmers producing for the niche market. Part of that plays to
the tune of having localised marketing in food production schemes
which rural development programmes can help to sustain notwithstanding
other Community programmes. How are you regarding that type of
expenditure under a reformed CAP? Just give us a flavour of what
you see as rural redevelopment from the Irish perspective.
(Mr Walsh) As you know, following the recent election
in Ireland we gave a full Cabinet post to a Minister for Rural
Development and that was to give it a bit of an impetus and to
have somebody round the Cabinet table who could make a difference
or regenerate activity in this area. Despite the fact that we
have talked about rural development over the last 50 years we
are losing the battle, more and more people are leaving the farms
and leaving the land. We have been relatively successful in attracting
industry to Ireland. We are ensuring that the balance of advantage
goes to those people who set up industry in rural villages and
coastal regions and we try to make that happen by rolling out
IT services and having regional airports and access to those areas
because without the access you have no chance whatever and industry
is pushed very much out to the regions. Last week we launched
a policy statement on what is called a spatial strategy and of
course every town that was in a gateway we called a gateway to
the region and they were very pleased that they were designated
as a gateway. In order to avoid a lot of political flak we thought
we had better designate other towns as well and we called those
hubs for development and the next tier down were the very important
villages and so on, but nonetheless we got hardly any response
other than wholesale criticism for the spatial strategy. The whole
idea is to try and get rural development. Planning is a big problem
in Ireland now. If a farmer with a family or some relation or
anybody else for that matter looks for planning in a rural area
invariably they are turned down by the local authority. Then it
is appealed to the Planning Appeals Board and you have all these
problems because, of course, the Appeals Board and the planners
want a countryside and they do not want any scars, with bungalows
or houses built on it and we are trying to retain the families
there. So industry is out there rolling out this broadband and
IT so that they have full access and we have some renowned success
stories in the most coastal and rural areas especially in the
processing of data, where they process the data and they send
it on to Dublin or London or San Francisco or whatever. The other
element of that is decentralisation. All my great civil servants
and advisers here will be going out to the most remote parts of
the country in the next few months because we have virtually all
the government departments and agencies in Dublin and the Government
have taken the view that there is no good reason why, say, agriculture
should be in the heart of Dublin, it should be out in more rural
downs and villages, there is no good reason why our fisheries
department, the Department of Marine, is right in the middle of
Dublin now as well. The Irish Food Board is in there and our agricultural
research body is in Dublin as well. This is all going to be voluntary,
of course.
Chairman
175. I bet the Taoiseach is not going to move,
is he?
(Mr Walsh) As long as the Taoiseach does not decide
he is going to contest the next election in Cork South-west I
will not mind so much. This decentralisation thing can go a bit
far. I think there is the possibility of this working without
disrupting things because when it really comes down to it you
have to be near the capital and the airport facilities and so
on and you cannot be trying to call up people from West Connemara
when they are needed. At the same time there is room for a degree
of decentralisation. We have a substantial proportion of people
in the Department of Agriculture already decentralized and it
works quite well, especially with the younger civil servants as
they get promotion and so on and if you have a critical mass of
them there there are advancement opportunities within the structure.
If you have these very small offices in small villages that does
not work terribly well. So we are making a determined effort at
any rate to stop the migration from rural areas into the capital,
Dublin.
Mr Jack: I have a vision of a large truck now
moving steadily around Ireland stopping everywhere saying that
this week the Ministry of Agriculture will be in . . .
Chairman: Like King John, do not lose your possessions
in the Wash.
Mr Jack
176. The thought of having the fisheries minister
bobbing around in a boat on the coast of Ireland—the mind
boggles. Talking about the rural development regulations, one
of the new chapters that was discussed was including things like
food quality and meeting standards for animal welfare. You made
the point, Minister, in your opening remarks about the growing
awareness about that aspect. I find it very difficult in an area
which struggles particularly with animal welfare to define what
exactly they mean by that. What one nation regards as high animal
welfare standards might not be the same in another. In terms of
food quality, I am sure every producer in Ireland would say that
they had the finest quality of whatever it was they produced,
but that would not be the same position for other Member States.
Would you like to comment on how you see this? It sounds wonderful
as a line in a document but in practice I am struggling to understand
how such measures would be implemented, funded and developed.
(Mr Walsh) I think in Europe we have improved animal
welfare and conditions for animals generally, their habitats and
on the farms and in their production systems. Certainly 20 or
25 years ago you had livestock tethered and tied up for long periods
of the day and night and the conditions under which they were
raised were fairly barbaric in many cases. That certainly has
been improved. On animal transport, we know from Foot and Mouth
Disease the amount of travelling which animals do. Sheep were
going from one part of Europe to the other. They were at a market
one day and maybe the following day 200 miles away at another
market and they travelled within the space of a week or two to
different countries even. In terms of transport, it is a requirement
now that they have adequate ventilation, they have adequate food,
they have rest periods, but you are right in saying that in some
countries they have a different definition to others. For example,
Ireland is the only island Member State now so we have a requirement
for the shipping of live animals and most other countries that
do not have that requirement think it should be discontinued altogether
and of course we disagree with that.
177. I had not noticed that we were not still
an island in this country actually so that makes two of us.
(Mr Walsh) Indeed. We will get a tunnel some fine
day and we will link up. By and large I think animal welfare matters
have come to the fore. There are hardly any meetings of the Council
of Ministers now where the two issues are not discussed there,
animal welfare and food safety and that was not the case 10 or
12 years ago. In terms of happy and more content animals, it is
a better place now than it was ten years ago. I agree with you
totally that trying to have standardized conditions from the Arctic
Circle round to the Mediterranean is not possible.
Chairman
178. Minister, do you get the impression that
there is a choice to make in Europe or perhaps in a sense there
is not a choice, there is only one way we can go? Can I take a
point of departure which is economically based and say that we
really need to push ahead with rationalisation, we need a dynamic
agriculture which is competitive on world markets because the
world, whether we like it or not, is liberalising. There is a
global market out there. We are not going to be able to sustain
the sort of supports and protections which we had in the past
for all sorts of reasons. On the other hand, there is the line
which I suppose is probably best expressed by the French peasants,
not being derogatory simply descriptive, who say that there is
a way of life at stake here, we have seen thousands of farms disappearing
every single year. That same article talks about the number of
farms disappearing in France and it is the equivalent of six Moulinex
factories of employment and we would like to stop the world and
get off because there are values we are protecting which stand
aside from a sort of commercial global world. Do you think it
is fair to characterise the debate on policy in those terms?
(Mr Walsh) There certainly is a two-pronged approach.
One side is that you need commercial farmers and you need them
to be able to hold their own internationally in international
competition, but at the same time you want to retain traditional
or family farms or, as in Europe, multi-functional agriculture
and multi-functional agriculture or family farms by their nature
are competitive and they need support and we believe it is important
to continue with that support. In recent years, again in support
of family farms, we have encouraged artisan food development and
cottage food development. In Ireland 20 years ago we had Cheddar
cheese, for example, and more Cheddar cheese and people thought
that is all we had. Nowadays I would say we probably have about
49 or 50 varieties of cheese and most of them are made in farmhouse
conditions and we developed country markets at that time in a
very big way and the biggest constraint is Europe because they
demand standardisation and the friendly free range hen and the
free range eggs and so on means it is very difficult because when
you go to your local supermarket it is all centralized buying
now and it is very hard to get an opportunity there. So we have
this tug of war all the time between commercialisation and retaining
that old system of farming or agriculture, but we are certainly,
with the establishment of a Minister for Rural Development and
so on, determined to try and retain that family farm for as long
as possible.
179. In Britain if you tried to chart the relationship
between, let us say, the 20% largest farms and the amount of output
they are responsible for I think you would find a really quite
surprisingly high figure at the end of that graph, 80% of all
the output. You would also find a category of small farms which
were basically dependent on farm income, but more than 50% of
farm businesses have outside income in the UK now and you would
find hobby farms or lifestyle farms where basically people have
got another job and it would be unreasonable to say that our policy
should be based upon making viable an enterprise which is not
even intended to be viable in the eyes of its owner in a sense,
although it would be nice if it were. Where do we draw the line
to try and make sure we are pursuing a policy which is grounded
in economic reality and recognising that if you were sitting here
in five years there would be x thousand fewer farmers in Ireland?
Even if the Archangel Gabriel were minister and if I were sitting
here as Chairman, in my constituency there would be several hundred
fewer farmers even if I were the Archangel Michael—I am
not terribly strong on my archangels! In a sense the world is
getting on a bit and we talk a great deal about the traditional
values and the importance of farming and being attached to the
soil, but I sometimes wonder whether farmers themselves do not
see what are we talking about. Do they not realise that the train
is passing while all this is going on and the new world is coming
upon us? Do you not sometimes feel one ought to say to them that
they should find the earliest sensible opportunity to get out?
It is a brutal question. Do many farmers at the end of the day
ask you that question because, whatever words we use and language,
they simply cannot see that the process is going to be stopped
which is ultimately pushing them to be more commercial, pushing
them closer to rationalisation and pushing us into judging ourselves
on how good it is to compete globally? Are we all the advisers
of King Canute? Canute was sensible, it was his advisers that
got it wrong.
(Mr Walsh) I am surprised that some of your former
colleague did not rub off a little bit more on you!
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