Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will just make a couple of final points before the Minister goes. It is nice to have him in the room. Apart from increasing feed production in Ireland, what about increasing food production? For example, we import 140,000 tonnes of potatoes from the UK every year. It is not as if we do not know how to grow a spud in Ireland. If we are looking at carbon footprint, that would be one simple thing we could do. It sounds facetious, but I think we should have a spud-growing grant. I know lots of food growers, and they struggle. Friends of mine run Beechlawn Organic Farm, which is the biggest organic growing operator in Ireland. Through a lot of sweat, blood and tears, they have 20 staff working for them. There are jobs in food production, despite what some people think. Sometimes dairy and beef farmers say that theirs is only half a job and they have to go and work, but anyone I know who is producing food actually creates a living for themselves out of it. There is that plus as well. Also, we need to produce more fruit in this country. It takes up land use. Anything we grow increases carbon efficiency and improves the topsoil, which we know locks in carbon. We have very shallow topsoil in Ireland and there are huge challenges there. If we improve the topsoil, we stop flooding and lose less nutrients as well. Food production is a huge issue.

The farming inspectors and advisers who have been issuing guidelines to farmers for years played a huge part in getting farming to where it is now, that is, where it is no longer fit for purpose as we face into a climate and biodiversity emergency. To that end, what education or training is being provided for the civil servants and inspectors so that they are very clear as to what has to be done and why it has to be done? If you do not understand why you have to do something, it is very hard to impart much to others and get them to understand why they have to do it. Friends of mine did the GLAS training to become inspectors. The inspectors themselves did not really believe in GLAS. How do we make sure there is a deeper understanding of the acreage issue, which gives me so much hope on paper, and the reason it is so vital for our children and grandchildren that we get this right? Unfortunately, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine probably has one of the most important jobs in the country in facing climate change. It has the solution to everything, whether it is energy, food or even transport. There are huge issues there. We could reduce our transport costs if we were not importing loads of food. The Department has the solution to carbon sequestration. There is a huge educational piece of work to be done. We cannot presume that everybody who has been taking a business as usual approach will suddenly know how to do things in a completely new way. I would love to hear what is happening around getting expertise in. I do not mean science experts. I mean land use and how the solutions to the climate emergency all lie in our land use, basically.

When we look at the increase in the herd, much of it is to do with the bad pricing that farmers get and the cost involved in slaughtering and dealing with offal. Offal is the elephant in the room when we are talking about agriculture. There is a monopoly in Ireland in terms of who owns the slaughterhouses and the offal disposal factories. They have a monopoly on how much they can charge. Until that is dealt with in some way, it will be hard for farmers to reduce their stock in intensive farming. Perhaps the co-operatives and looking at other ways of doing things are part of the solution as well. It has all become so centralised now that it is outside farmers' control. They do not have any competitive power because of the monopoly.