Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I welcome financial supports for small farmers during this bad weather. Unfortunately for them and society in general, the weather will keep getting worse and farming will become more and more difficult due to climate change.

Yesterday at the climate committee, we heard presentations from the authors of Ireland's climate change assessment, an official Government report. They told us average temperatures in this country are already about 1°C higher than in the early 20th century. 2022 was the hottest year on record and then came 2023. This 1°C rise has led to an increase in heavy precipitation extremes and 7% more annual rainfall. The flooding last autumn is an example of that. The near-constant rain since last July leaving fields across the country waterlogged and unsuitable for sowing crops or grazing is another.

The author's of Ireland's climate change assessment warned that if effective action is delayed, we are looking at 3°C of heating by the end of the century, and that this would leave the Irish climate unrecognisable. If flooding and an inability to sow crops or graze cattle is the result of 1°C of warming, imagine the catastrophic impact 3°C will have.

This is a Government report. The Department of agriculture should be paying it as much attention as the Department of the environment. The Minister should be responding to the bad weather as one of the impacts of climate change on farming because that is what it is. Instead, incredibly, he is responding by doubling down on a model of industrial agriculture that is the second biggest cause of the climate crisis globally and the leading cause in this country. One quarter of Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock farming. More than 90% of that is for export; it is not for people here to eat.

The Minister's food vision group recommended two years ago that the number of dairy cattle would have to reduce by 65,000 per year for the next three years to have any hope of reaching our emissions reductions targets. It recommended that a voluntary exit and reduction scheme be introduced to compensate dairy farmers. The ICMSA said: "This created an expectation, and farmers began making preparations on the basis that the scheme was on the way." That would have been absolutely appropriate but last week the Minister confirmed there will be no voluntary exit and reduction scheme.

Not only that, but the Government will be the only EU state to attempt to keep the nitrates derogation. Every other EU state has recognised the reality of water pollution and the climate crisis and realised the derogation has to go, but not Ireland. A press statement from the Minister on 17 April states that, in light of continued challenging weather conditions, the Minister is extending the deadlines for nitrates derogation applications. It is insanity that the Minister is responding to flooding caused by climate change by enabling big dairy farmers to make both climate change and water pollution even worse. Floods wash nitrates from fertiliser and animal waste into our rivers, lakes and streams.

What is the purpose of the nitrates derogation? It is to enable big dairy farmers to overstock their land to maximise profits for themselves and the dairy industry, and to hell with the cost to water quality, biodiversity or the climate. That is why the bosses of the dairy industry are hell-bent on keeping it. Earlier this month the CEO of Tirlán Jim Bergin said the focus has to be on two things: how we support our farmers through the current climatic conditions and how we retain the derogation. He suggested we fight on our backs to hold the derogation.

The same contradictory focus has been adopted hook, line and sinker by the Minister for agriculture. Like every Minister for agriculture before him, he is not so much a Minister for agriculture as a Minister for big farmers and agribusiness. The Minister seems to believe that, with water pollution and climate change, it is possible to keep doing the same thing over and over but somehow get a different result.

The majority of ordinary people, both urban and rural, are more realistic. A recent survey carried out by Friends of the Earth and Ireland Thinks found 82% of people think we should pay farmers more for what we need most from the land: local food, clean water and less climate pollution. Some 50% think we should support farmers to diversify away from beef and dairy, compared to only 37% who disagreed. This is the type of approach the Minister should advocate. Instead, he bows to industry pressure and pretends business as usual can continue. Last year Dairy Industry Ireland, the representative body for the big milk processors, essentially threatened the Minister with being sued if he followed the food vision group's advice and went ahead with a voluntary exit and reduction scheme.

They claim that they were encouraged by Government policy to invest billions of euro in milk processing to cater for milk volume growth. As a result, they say they have a case for compensation if milk output shrinks due to a cattle reduction scheme and this cuts the return on their investment. Where have we seen such tactics before? They were used by big oil and gas companies, which threatened to sue if governments took meaningful action to phase out fossil fuels because that would reduce their return on investment and leave them with stranded assets. Countries across Europe are leaving the Energy Charter Treaty in order that big oil and gas can no longer sue them for taking effective climate action. The Government must take the same approach towards big dairy and the dairy industry. We cannot allow a wealthy elite to hold us all over a barrel and demand either that we bail them out for their bad investments or give them a licence and call it a derogation to continue to pollute. Instead, we need to direct the billions of euro needed for just transition in farming towards those who need it, by which I mean small farmers and not the billionaire bosses of the meat and dairy industry like Larry Goodman who want us all to pay for their gambling debts. To do that we need to nationalise the food processors and the big agribusiness so they can be redirected toward supporting small farmers as part of a climate neutral, eco-socialist food system that enhances biodiversity instead of undermining it.

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