Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

How worried are the witnesses about the 2040 plan? Farmers will have to meet these targets by 2030 and we will not be able to cut turf or burn peat. Are the witnesses worried about that? If we have to comply with the Paris Agreement, come hell or high water, will it hurt Irish farmers? I did not vote to accept the Paris Agreement because farmers will pay. The Taoiseach and the Minister have said there will be €22 billion to deal with climate change but we are already paying €0.5 billion and another €0.5 billion will come out of farmers' pockets. I am worried about signing up to these agreements because a lot of things can happen, such as Brexit or the weather, and farmers on the west coast are out of fodder at the moment. Are we going to insist that our farmers go into the red, or out of existence, to comply with these agreements? A lot of farmers are worried because many things can go wrong in farming and create double or triple the trouble. Deputy Martin Kenny referred to sucklers and spoke about getting beef calves from dairy cows. The suckler trade is bad enough without suggesting that. I know farmers in the west who cannot milk cows as their hilly ground is not amenable to it, though they provide good sucklers. We must try to protect the suckler farmer as well as the dairy farmer.