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

I agree fully with Mr. Healy. It is exactly the type of scheme and initiative we need to open up access to land and provide securities and other mechanisms to do so. John Gummer, Lord Deben, the former UK environment Minister, now chairman of its climate committee, and farmer speaks very authoritatively on farming. It is interesting to listen to him.

He said the UK opted for an industrialised, intensive farming system and is now rapidly retreating, not just because it realises that system does not work in terms of profitability. The banks and everyone else benefit but the farmer does not in the end. The farmers end up indentured to a very intensive system. The soil and environment are shot and the UK actually has to go back to where we are, which is to smaller, family-based, less-intensive farms. It is similar in New Zealand. It opted for mass intensification. It has land very similar to ours and has some similar social characteristics. It is rapidly retreating because its water is gone.

Reference was made to what we value. When I listen to Teagasc and, I hate to say, the farming organisations, and certainly the Department and the Minister, I realise they are all about intensification and rapidly trying to get to where England is and where New Zealand went. I am pulling my hair out in the belief we should not do this because those countries are coming back towards us. Why would we not stay where we are?

Let me outline why I asked whether the system is working. We have to look at this from a rural development perspective. I have always believed Macra na Feirme recognises the importance of community, getting farmers working together in a parish, working collectively and having a rural community. Not only is the intensification model destroying the water, wrecking the soil and creating a system of indentured farming that is good for big business but not for the small Irish family farm, it is also failing to protect rural communities. While we need to give young farmers access to land, do we not need to go a little further and shift away from the concept of achieving growth at all costs and having ever-greater intensification, which is all about the processors doing well and big industrial plcs calling all the shots and running things, which is where we are going? I do not want to name names here but we all know who we are talking about. Does Macra na Feirme, as a community organisation, not believe the shift needs to happen?