Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to make a point about agriculture. There is no doubt agriculture is a powerful indigenous industry and that it is very important to this country, but if we are not going to seriously consider targets we will do a disservice to it. There are areas where changes can be brought about. Our agricultural emissions are way out of sync with the rest of Europe and there are ways to address the matter. We have not even considered the different types of animal we can use to deal with challenges in this area. We are about to increase the dairy herd out of all proportion, which will probably drive down the price of milk and drive up emissions. In spite of that, we will bury our heads in the sand and say we cannot touch agriculture. We all want to look after agriculture but let us do it in a sustainable way. I accept that what the Minister calls sustainable and what I call sustainable are probably different. We are not being fair to agriculture if we do not address the challenges agriculture faces in this area because what will happen is that it will have to face them at a later stage and that will result in bigger problems. In not setting targets now we are being unfair to agriculture.