Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, we estimate that in the next five years there could be an extra 10,000 people employed in the dairy sector in Ireland. Between 3,000 and 4,000 extra people could be actually milking cows, but there will also be more employment in processing, transport and refrigeration, export and packaging, food science and nutrition and all the other things that the dairy industry is now about.

That is a hugely positive thing for rural Ireland. If anyone drives out of Cork city and through Mallow, they will see an €80 million investment by Dairygold. If they drive across to Mitchelstown, there is a €40 million investment there. If they drive to Charleville, there is another €50 million investment, this time by the Kerry Group. If they drive across to Moorepark in Fermoy, there is another investment of approximately €30 million for research facilities. This is what the dairy industry is doing for Ireland, and that is just in rural Cork, so that picture can be replicated in other counties as well.

I am certainly not going to allow a situation where, because of the setting of blunt targets for agriculture or for Ireland as a whole, we are going to reduce herd size and reduce output to meet targets when we are producing milk at the lowest emissions intensity on the planet. We are making, and we will make, that argument at a European level in terms of the setting of targets for 2030. However, that is not to say that Ireland does not need to do radical and dramatic things to meet our targets in terms of our responsibilities regarding climate change. We need to look at what we can do in other sectors. While the emissions from agriculture have come down considerably over the past ten years, there is a lot we can do in regard to energy and transport in particular, and we need to be very ambitious in those areas.

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