Fianna Fáil is committed to a vibrant agriculture sector which offered a real future for those involved, the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, said on Saturday.
Launching his party's five-point blueprint for the future, Mr Walsh said rural voters were being presented with a choice between a party clearly committed to prioritising their interests and one including parties which had taken a consistently anti-rural stance.
Fianna Fáil, he said, was offering farm families attractive and sustainable livelihood options and was focused on meeting consumer demand with the highest regard for food safety and quality.
The plan also respected the rural environment, valued the countryside and offered a much wider rural agenda to help support the wide diversity found within rural communities.
His party was best placed to face the upcoming challenges of the mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy, enlargement of the Union and the defence of the industry in the world trade talks. Previous governments had been criticised, he said, for not having a long-term plan for agriculture. But Fianna Fáil had a solid plan, not just an election manifesto.
"This plan has been drawn up in consultation with all the key players, farmers, processors, retailers food service and the relevant state agencies," he said.
The National Development Plan had committed an investment programme of funding worth €8.5 billion over the seven years and €6.1 billion of this had been allocated to agriculture, food and rural development.
In his presentation, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Mr Éamon Ó Cuiv, said under-employment and low incomes were the twin problems facing many rural families.
In reply to questions on the problems facing farming families attempting to get planning permission to build homes for their children, the Minister said Fianna Fáil would address those problems.
"We recognise the traditional rural settlement pattern which has been there for thousands of years.We are prepared to protect the right of people to live in dispersed settlements or townlands as they have done for thousands of years," he said.
It was also, he said, committed to the protection and development of rural services and infrastructure and rural areas without places for people to live was a contradiction in terms.
He warned that if rural Ireland was to wither away, the Celtic Tiger would wither with it.
Mr Walsh, denied that he had done a U-turn by allowing cattle dealers to sell animals twice in the 30-day period after purchase at a mart, rather than hold them for 30 days.
He had introduced the 30-day rule last year to slow animal movement but the dealers objected and boycotted marts last week, severely disrupting trade.
Mr Walsh had initially refused to amend the 30-day rule, but on Saturday he said that he was satisfied the animal identification system would prevent abuse and said a settlement had been reached with the farm organisations, the marts and the dealers who wanted the change.