Natasha Newsome Drennan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)

I thank the officials for coming in. We are beef farmers at home and I am totally opposed to this. Beef farmers are being thrown under the bus for the sake of Germany and its big fancy cars. It is absolute madness. Can we get a copy of the environmental structures Ms McPhillips was talking about? I understand dairy is going to increase by a small bit. It will not be huge. The officials are saying the effect on Irish beef farmers is €55 million and the pot of money that is being dangled in front of us is €63 billion for the whole of Europe. That pot of European money is a fund in case of us falling on hard times. How will that be split up throughout Europe? What piece of the pie are we going to get? That is all right for next year, but what about the year after, the one after that and the next generation of farmers? I cannot see that money still being there.

Nothing is telling me that it will be there. I would not trust this Government, never mind the European Parliament, to do right by us when we are such a small piece of the jigsaw. Ireland is tiny in comparison with the whole of Europe.

Others have spoken about rainforests being cut down. It is okay for them to have a black hole over their skies but our skies will be clear. We will have to pay huge fines for not meeting our targets. We will not meet them. Every Government building should have solar panels on it. Not enough is being done. Most of it was blamed on farmers, from what I can see. There is huge anger out there, especially among beef farmers. The whole thing baffles me.

On the environmental structures, who is going to monitor Brazil? It was stated there will be more checks on meat coming in. Can we trust that there will be more checks in place? It will cost money to do that. Is that a hit on the Irish Government? Will it have to fork out that money? All these things need to be taken into consideration. I will leave the witnesses with that for a minute. Plenty of anger.