Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 January 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Regulation on Nature Restoration: European Commission

Photo of Michael FitzmauriceMichael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Right.

We will try to keep these questions and answers as short as we can. Dr. Delgado Rosa talked about productivity in different areas. We talk about a thing called community. The European Commission might not know much about it. We also talk about private property rights in Ireland. On productivity, what would Dr. Delgado Rosa say to farmers in this regard? He should bear in mind that Ireland has approximately 95% of its peatlands in its north west, west, midlands and south west. There are many farmers who raise families and contribute to communities in those areas. When the CAP was brought in, it was to keep the price of food cheap. It was to subsidise it. Farmers would not get as much for their stock, but they got it a different way. Now, however, all these other things are being closed in. Let us call a spade a spade here. When Dr. Delgado Rosa talks about rewetting peatland, the only way it will ever be possible to get it to a favourable status is by raising the water level and making the land moist. It is not flooded but it is made moist. We have done this already. There is no point in Dr. Delgado Rosa telling me or anybody else that farmers will be walking cattle up and down such a field. They will not be, nor, for that matter, will they be walking sheep.

Turning to the figures Dr. Delgado Rosa was on about, he talked about the amount of methane and carbon coming out of peatland. A study is being conducted in Ireland now and the initial figures - I admit these are not fully done because the work will take a few years - are totally different to what is coming from the Netherlands and other places. What would Dr. Delgado say to farmers who have farmed and contributed to communities and who have all their land in peatland? This is what some people here have. What would he say to these people? Where will they go? I can tell him now that regardless of whether he likes it or whether the EU wants to drive this on top of Ireland, the study he talked about, and the cost-benefit analysis of 8:1, has not been done in a context looking at a family living and contributing to a community in a rural part of this country. Land types are totally different in different parts of Ireland. What would Dr. Delgado Rosa say to those farmers who would basically have to abandon their lands? It was said there is one figure for 2030 and Bord na Móna can cover this figure for 2030.

On 1 January 2040, 50% of it has to be done. That means we in Ireland have to have 90,000 ha from 2030 to 2040 done. We have to have 60,000 ha done before that going by the figures that I have of 300,000 ha. Where do private property rights come into this in the so-called regulations?

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