Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is an argument that we are the only country in Europe with a derogation but we have a completely different system of dairy farming from other countries. We produce our milk from grass. Grass takes nitrogen to grow. Most of the other countries have indoor systems that have their own problems with water quality. We have a completely different farming system. We have carbon sequestration in our system. I hope that the next water report we get will show that water quality has improved and it will solve the issue for everyone. As has been mentioned by others, an economic assessment needs to be done of the damage this will do to the rural economy. It is not 100 years ago that we had the troika in 2008 and 2009. If we had not had our dairy industry in rural Ireland it would have been very easy to talk to it.