Mr. Eddie Punch:

That seems to be one of their highest ever. I cannot give the Deputy chapter and verse going back over the years.

In other words, they managed the crisis. When natural gas was at its peak, they just stopped production. That impacted the availability of fertiliser and that was an issue right across Europe, in the United States and in South America. Every farmer in the world had a problem with their fertiliser in 2022. Not every farmer in the world is having a problem with their fertiliser in 2023 but we still have.

There is an outside world tuned into this and people think this is just farmers again. This is actually about the cost of food and food security. I mentioned earlier that the Commission’s reaction to this in 2022 was lethargic, to say the least. There was much talk about the need for soil health and alternatives to fertiliser – all green agenda kind of stuff, which is fine to a point. Every farmer wants to use as littler fertiliser as they can without sacrificing efficiencies. That is why farmers want this lime subsidy. On the other hand, it does not make any sense for a country like Ireland. In fact, Ireland, with the potential to have the highest cereal yield crops almost anywhere in the world, all things going well with weather and all of that, and with the potential to grow grass better than many other countries, we have a vested interest in optimising our competitive advantage in that. That is dependent on fertiliser being available to Irish farmers at a competitive price compared with other farmers in Europe or elsewhere in the world.

This is serious business. We can talk all we want about the switch to organic farming. That is part of the agenda and that is fine. The reality is we also have to have regard for food security and what the impact can be on the price of food to consumers. This is a consumer issue as well. Sri Lanka gave an example of that.

They thought they did not need fertiliser. All of these things have to be balanced. The fertiliser register is an additional burden on farmers. It speaks to what I said earlier. When we want to have more scrutiny and more regulation of farmers, we seem to find a way but the scrutiny at the other end of the food chain, supply chain or input chain is never quite as easy, which is a huge frustration to farmers.