Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I must apologise for being absent earlier. I had to go up to the Chamber for a contribution on the European Council debate but, as it happened, Deputy Micheál Martin approached me and informed me that he had made some sort of deal to extend this Dáil by another year. I asked, in my contribution, what are we going to use that year for? We should use it for consensus on certain key issues and I hope we can get consensus on the key elements of the new national energy climate action plan that has to be delivered by next year.

For the farming sector, the timing could not be better in the sense that, in getting ready for it, we have to have a vision of the new Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. Extending that vision of new politics, I hope the environmental movement can sit down and talk with the various farming bodies to see how we can achieve both better pay for farmers and a restoration of nature in our land. Mr. Healy was talking about 1990. Since then, we have lost pristine water. Could we pay farmers to help restore that?

The World Wildlife Fund report came out last month saying we have lost 60% of invertebrate wildlife in the world and that has happened in Ireland the same as elsewhere. Could we pay farmers to help restore that in this consensus that we seek?

Mr. Healy said that things have not changed since 1990. One thing that has not changed since 1990 is that most farmers, I understand, are getting the same price for the produce that their mother or father got in 1990. Could we change the power structures in Irish retailing and the power of the PLCs to start changing that as a precondition?

If we were to do all that, we should also pay farmers, under CAP, for turning the current situation. No matter what is said, the physical reality is that our emissions went up 3% last year and roughly the same the year before. It is a hell of a challenge to turn that around, but we must collectively turn it around.

The Green Party is in a really interesting place. Our colleagues in Germany, Belgium and Holland, the people who are going to be paying this budget, are on the rise. I would love to bring over my colleagues to sit down with the witnesses here. My colleagues have their objectives and interests and the witnesses have theirs. Those interests may be different because, as the national land use system recognises, we may have different needs for different types of farmers. Would the witnesses be willing to sit down with my colleagues under new politics and in a just transition way? We need a just transition with Irish farmers in the same way we need a just transition with Bord na Móna workers and perhaps do a just transition with each different category of farmer in terms of how it works for the witnesses, us and everyone.

We must do this in the next year. In respect of a willingness or not to do that, do the witnesses think the current system serves their members? If we are talking about changing it, are we talking about tweaking it or radical change going into that process for the next year?