Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the presentations. There is a lot going on today. I will ask a few questions of the IFA and Mr. Rushe. We had the scientists in yesterday who put a large dose of reality into the conversation. One of the things Professor Kevin Anderson said was there was no such thing as a universal "we" and that most people were not responsible for most emissions. I suspect this applies equally to farmers. When the IFA talks about farmers and farms, on average and in general, we should be able to qualify where the real problem lies.

The figures on the cattle numbers are interesting. Mr. Rushe said in his submission that livestock numbers have not actually risen and offset the huge increase in dairy cattle as against beef cattle. However, the Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures show that from 2010 to 2020, there has been a 46.4% increase in the dairy herd. That is almost 50%, one may as well say, to average it out, but that does not go for the thousands of farmers who cannot sustain a proper income from the farms they have.

In that case, the IFA should welcome changes to the way agriculture is run in this country but, of course, it is driven by the Government. I work out of the Department of agriculture and it has, through Teagasc and Bord Bia, deliberately driven up the cattle numbers, especially in dairy, in order to, pardon the pun, beef up the export market. We export a high number of cattle and those exports are worth a significant sum of money. However, it is not our biggest industry, pharmaceuticals are our highest export.

Having said that, I would like to ask----