I thank the Chair for allowing me to raise this matter on the Adjournment this evening. I welcome the Minister to the House.
I want to make a few brief points about dismantling the sheepmeat regime and how it affects the Irish farmer. I regret very much, as I am sure every Member of this House regrets, what happened yesterday. I do not condone the actions taken by the farming community who drove sheep into a Government building. If one examines the dismantling of the sheepmeat policy and how it affects the Irish sheep farmer, one can understand the tremendous frustration of farmers. That type of protest does not do anybody any good but one must look at what has happened.
As I understand it, and hopefully the Minister will be able to clarify the position, the sheep premium which forms a large part of every sheep farmer's income has been cut by 27 per cent. I do not know how sheep farmers in the west of Ireland who depend on this type of farming for a livelihood are going to rear a family when there has been a 27 per cent cut in the premium. No other section of society would tolerate that. No trade union or group of businessmen would tolerate a cut of that size in their income. This matter was not given the degree of urgency it merited and I call on the Minister for Agriculture and Food to tell us what can be done to redress this situation.
There is no point in saying this started two years ago. That does not get the money back into the sheep farmers' pockets. What I want, and I hope what the Minister wants, is to restore farmers' incomes. They have taken a hammering on wool prices; wool is only 20p a lb. They have taken a hammering on lamb prices which are continuing to drop. That, together with the fact that the premium is fixed now on 1991 numbers, means a total drop in all sheep farmers' incomes and there is no question about it. There is a substantially greater number of sheep in the country this year than there was last year and that means that many of those farmers will have to cut back on production as a result of the change in the numbers for premium.
Again, we are dealing with a crisis affecting 52,000 sheep farmers. Those farmers and their families will not be able to survive on the land if this situation is not redressed by the restoration of income supports in the form of the beef premium and the sheep premium. Whether we like it or not, in the past number of years we have become more and more dependent on getting cheques through the post. That is regrettable. I would much prefer that farmers would be able to produce a commodity, sell it on the world market and get a price for it. However, whether we like it or not, that is the way farming has developed over the past five to six years and we are going to have to ensure that the commitments that were given are met.
Many farmers who bought sheep last year on the understanding that the sheep subsidy would be at the same rate as last year now find themselves having to take a 27 per cent cut in income. The vast majority of farmers were not aware of this huge drop in income until last Friday or until the news was published in the papers on Saturday. We were all led to believe that Ireland, by voting yes in a ratio of two to one on the Maastricht Treaty, had put the Treaty back on the rails and given a new impetus to a united Europe. Instead of that on Friday, before the votes were fully counted, we were stabbed in the back and had to accept a 27 per cent cut in sheep premium resulting in a drop of £30 million to the Irish sheep farmer. Hence, we had that spontaneous protest yesterday. I do not condone what happened, but that is why those people were on the streets yesterday.
Again, the Minister came back from Brussels a month ago and pointed to the different schemes which has been approved in Brussels, including the suckler cow scheme and the beef premium scheme. However, the ink was hardly dry on those contracts before the sheep regime was dismantled. What I and every other farmer would like to know is if the same thing is going to happen two or three years down the road to the beef premium or the suckler cow scheme. We have to ask that question. There is no guarantee it will not happen. If it has happened once, it can happen again. This is why the Minister will have a fight on his hands if he does not ensure that these premia are restored to last year's level.
In the part of the country I come from and the whole west of Ireland, we traditionally produce sheep and beef heifers along with the suckler cows. Now the sheep subsidy has been dismantled with a reduction of 27 per cent and we have got nothing for heifers. I predict that in two years time we will be back to the situation we were in after the collapse in 1973 when in my neck of the woods calves were won in card games. However, I do not want to pursue that; I am merely point out the major effects this shattering drop in income has had on the whole of the west of Ireland.
What I want to know is what steps the Minister proposes to take to restore this income. I could lambast and criticise the Minister for the way the negotiations were handled but I intend to be positive. What I want to know is how we can restore this massive drop in income. I was not privy to the negotiations, but if there was a limited pool of money some of it that was going towards the suckler and beef premia should have been diverted to the sheep meat regime and that regime should not have been allowed to be dismantled leaving the sheep farmers in the position they are in today. Between the drop in lamb prices, in wool prices and the cut in premium, they are all facing a 27 per cent drop in income. Many people outside sheep farming and farming generally do not realise that and that is what caused all the frustration we saw on the streets yesterday.
I understand the first part of the subsidy was cleared at £4.99 when in fact it was £6.75 last year. There is no way farmers can take this. I hope the Minister will be able to contradict me and say my figures are wrong but I understand that this year the sheep premium will be £16.33 where last year it was £22.69. In days gone by when we were discussing the milk quota and all of the difficulties that arose at that time the then Minister, Deputy Deasy, had to walk through a minefield not alone to ensure that our milk quota was not cut but at the time he got a 3 per cent increase.
It is of vital importance to the whole sheep industry, to all the people working in the meat factories that are killing the lambs and servicing the trade that this subsidy is restored to protect farmers' incomes. I have seen figures published by people with no vested interest in the matter and they calculate that instead of the subsidy reducing this year, it would need to be £28, given the drop in lamb prices and in the price of wool, to restore sheep farmers' incomes to what they were two years ago. This has arisen partly as a result of the change in the method of calculating the subsidy for sheep.
I regret very much that both the Irish farmer and the Northern Irish farmer were not treated as one separate unit. We are fast becoming the only island of Europe and we should have got special recognition. It costs us much more to get our lamb on the French market than it costs the people on mainland Europe but that was not taken into consideration. It must also be realised that many of the problems that have been created for the sheep regime are caused by importing lamb from New Zealand onto the French market thus affecting the price Irish farmers get for lamb and literally ensuring that Irish farmers cannot get a livelihood. That is what is happening at the present time. The Minister will have to ensure that that does not continue. We are exporting 80 per cent of our produce onto the French market; that is the market we have for our lamb. We are the only country in the world with that level of our production going for export and we must protect that export market.
Over the past number of years ewe numbers have increased in this country from 2.5 million to five million. Farmers were committed to developing the sheep industry on the advice of the Department of Agriculture and Food. Now they find the plug is pulled and that they can no longer continue to develop. There is no expansion. Young people going into farming cannot get quotas for the sheep, milk, beef and suckler cow schemes. I do not want to go into the whole mess. Questions are being asked and I am sure the Minister is well aware of them. However, I appeal to him to try to sort out the questions on the whole Common Agricultural Policy reform before this week is out because many farmers have forms which they do not know what to do with since they do not know the bottom line. Let me conclude by asking the Minister what steps he proposes to take to restore sheep farmers' income.