Friends and colleagues, it’s with great pleasure I stand here today to address Conference.
Probably the most buoyant Conference many of us have ever attended!
We are certainly up for the fight next May aren`t we?
The record of the last 4 years of DUP/Sinn Fein treating Stormont as their own Personal Political Playground has been an utter disaster for Northern Ireland.
Budgets falling apart, Ministers dragging each other through the courts, and over the last 6 weeks Peter Robinson thought it more important to give himself a fig leaf rather than have a Health Minister getting to grips with the crisis throughout our hospitals.
Talk about political self-preservation at any cost!
I have had the honour of being this Party’s Agriculture spokesperson since 2011.
Proudly representing Upper Bann, I know the issues that our farmers face –
In fact I hear many of those issues across the kitchen table at home.
The problems right now are unprecedented.
Beef, Sheep, Dairy, Pork are all receiving far smaller returns than they deserve.
Even compared to England the price difference for our farmers can be startling.
The recent EU aid package for our dairy farmers was a start, but not nearly enough.
There are dairy farmers across every county losing thousands of pounds every month.
And whilst farming families struggle what is the Sinn Fein Minister doing!
Well she's spending 60 million and more of your money on a shiny new headquarters at Ballykelly!
No business case, no willingness to look at other solutions and all with the full support of the DUP, especially Gregory Campbell!
How times change Conference…. when a Sinn Fein minister is Gregory's girl when it comes to Agriculture!
Such foolhardy spending at a time when the farming industry is on its knees is nothing short of a shame and a disgrace!
She’s a Minister who pats herself on the back for things which would have happened anyway.
A Minister who didn’t seem to realise the crisis until farmers started physically coming up to Stormont to protest.
Blaming everything on DEFRA, the European Commission and even the border simply doesn’t wash anymore.
So what would we do differently if we were in office?
Well we certainly wouldn’t be putting political dogma and pet projects ahead of actually supporting our farmers!
But in all seriousness – and this is what I hope will be in our alternative programme for government – that this Party would be an unashamed pursuer of NEW export markets.
Access to new markets is the best way to secure the long-term future of our industry.
It’s worked for poultry so why not other sectors.
The world should be our oyster.
An Ulster Unionist Agriculture Minister would tackle red tape.
Because everyone knows less time on repetitive forms means more time on the farm.
We would end the stranglehold supermarkets and processors have on local producers.
Northern Ireland’s farmers deserve so much more than what they have got at present –
This cannot be as good as it gets for our farmers.
That’s why it’s up to me and to you to convince them of what the Ulster Unionist Party could do better.
I support the motion.
Thank you