Senator Gerard Craughwell-- speech from 29 Mar 2022

Go raibh agat, Glasgow Heerlich. Minister, you're welcome to the House. I think it's the first time I've spoken to you since you became Minister, so it's a bit late to be congratulating you on that. But anyway, I want to congratulate you for the speed at which you picked up the problems associated with where we are right now, and you've moved from one crisis into the next crisis. And I have to say you've done it and done it well and shown yourself as somebody who's willing to get out there and get down on the ground and speak to people. The picture that we're painting here today is pretty frightening. It's no secret I served in the military, and I've seen what tracked vehicles will do to agricultural land, and I can see the damage that's going to be done to land in the Ukraine and in Russia, and it will not be repaired easily. So it's not going to be a recovery. Even in the morning, if this was all to stop, you're going to find it very, very difficult to get that land back up and productive fairly quickly. And that is a serious concern to me. Now, I'm a city boy. I was a city boy all my life, and for me, milk came in cartons and bread came in wrappers, and I never had to think much more about it in my life until now. And every sector in our agricultural and fisheries is now going to be impacted, and impacted really severely as we move forward. As you rightly pointed out, boats going to sea, trawlers going to sea for several days at a time. They take thousands and thousands of litres of diesel to drive those trawlers, and the costs are going through the roof. And to a certain degree, government can only do so much. There is a time when you can no longer provide subsidies or cuts in costs or whatever, and we're rapidly heading to that position right now. So there's going to have to be a lot of thought put into how we allocate resources in the coming months. We talk in terms of the Ukrainian conflict and Russia's outrageous behaviour. We talk about it as if it's something that's going to pass in the near future. We have no idea in hell when this is going to stop. We have no idea that Putin's war will stop in Ukraine. It may very well move into Macedonia. It may very well move into Poland. Who knows where it's going? Right now we're in a state of flux, and we have no idea where things are going. And yet we look at the breadbasket of Europe when we talk about Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are producing about 30% of the cereal crops required in the world. And as we move through this, the wealthy part of the world, the globe we live in, will be able to meet the prices. Yes, we'll have to cut back on other things, but we'll be able to meet the prices that will be demanded for cereal crops. My concern is particularly for Africa. They're going to suffer something terrible. Right now we have ships off the ports in Ukraine, which are not allowed to put to sea by Putin and his war machine. So you have ships that are loaded with grain and nowhere to go in places like Odessa and Maliupa. So where do we go with this? How are we going to solve this problem? I have no idea. When we talk about agriculture, we talk about the need for fertilizer. A lot of fertilizer has come in here through Russia, through Ukraine, through Belarus over the years. How are we going to solve that problem in the very near future? My colleague Paul spoke about putting what is beef land for all intents and purposes into tillage. That's going to be a serious problem, and I think Senator Daley has made the point. You're now asking farmers to move away from their competence into a new area planting cereals, and you have been good in putting forward supports for them. Chagas and various other organizations in the state are there to assist them in any way they need it. But at the end of the day, we're talking about a major step forward. I always think when I think of agriculture, my dad every Good Friday planted our garden. He went out at 6 o'clock in the morning and didn't go to bed until it was fully planted, and there was enough vegetables in it to feed us for the best part of the winter. So the planting season is quite close, the end of the planting season is quite close, and we're running into serious trouble there. Now, I've had an email today, and I think most of us have, from the growing media in Ireland, and they talk about, Senator Daley just mentioned it, the issue of peat and our reliance on peat, and the importation of peat, which to me sort of goes totally against the green agenda in this country. We're prepared to take peat from somewhere else, and we're not prepared to use our own. But I do understand their problem. Now, I visited Iceland a couple of years ago, and Taiwan in 2020, and we saw in both of those countries that you can have a very, very lucrative horticultural business without the use of peat, but it requires massive inputs of energy. In Iceland it's very easy because the energy is there flowing under the ground very, very easily to get to it. We don't have access to energy like that in this country. One of the things that I'm absolutely outraged about is the closing down of Derry Brine in Galway, the generating system there. We're in the middle of an international emergency, and what are we doing? We're taking apart a generating system in Derry Brine because it didn't comply with planning, and I have no difficulty with that, but I think there should be a moratorium put on that in the morning to keep that generating until such a time as this crisis passes. The last thing we need is energy shortages as we move through this. So from that point of view, I believe that the Government needs to move there and preserve what energy production we have in order that we can take reliance off other fuels and maybe use them in the agricultural sector. I know I'm going over time, so I'll leave it at that. But Minister, you have my support for what you're doing. Fair play to you. You're out there on the ground, and I know you're very close to the fisheries industry up in your own constituency. They will need massive support as well. So thank you very much. Let's care. Thank you, Senator Crockwell. Thank you. I hope so much for you. Thank you very much.