Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the speakers. It has been an incredibly interesting discussion. I wish I had much longer. I have many questions for each of the witnesses but I will primarily focus on the issue of agriculture and agricultural emissions. The question will be for Mr. Rushe.

One word that kept on coming up, yesterday and today, is "honest": honest discussions and being honest with stakeholders. To be honest, the Government has not been honest with farmers. It is pretending or skirting around the fact that farmers will have a greater role to play in this and in meeting our emissions targets. By doing that, the Government is doing the farmers a disservice because it is not facilitating the engagement. It is not making sure whatever changes will need to happen are being done with the farming community and in a way that benefits the farming community.

I looked up some interesting statistics. Mr. Rushe mentioned that the majority of farmers are in an economically vulnerable place. That is correct. The average farm income is €25,000, which by anybody's standards is low, and 43% of farms are on less than €10,000 a year. For farmers and for the farming community, our current system of farming does not work economically for the majority of farmers. It does not work environmentally either. The fact that agricultural emissions represent 35% of greenhouse gases and the issues we have with nitrates and phosphates show there are environmental problems in the way we farm. It also does not work socially because, as they say, young people - sons and daughters - are not in a position to take over their parents' farm because it is not economically feasible for them to do so. It is a system that does not work for the farming community. There is an opportunity to reform. This could be the point at which we appreciate and value the work farmers do and pay them to do it, because what I hear repeatedly from farmers is they will do what the Government needs them to do but they need to be paid to do it.

I have a specific question on an issue I raised the other day on the herd because the herd is one of those issues that pops up regularly as a primary area where we could reduce methane emissions quite rapidly. This is a very open discussion. If a farmer-----