Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

They have to come around. I hope I can bring them around to the thought that I hear from different people, including people in Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party, the socialist parties and Sinn Féin. There is an understanding. We hear it in the House and I have heard it on the radio as well. I have heard farmers saying they are over-stocking, that it is not working and that they have to change. I hear it, so let us go with it. I am including the Rural Independent Group.

When it comes to forestry we should consider the idea of a wild Atlantic rain forest. I was reading Pádraic Fogarty on this topic. Climate change is uncertain and it is unclear what exactly will happen, but the best scientists reckon that we are going to have wetter winters in the north and west and possibly drier summers in the south and east. That could be difficult to manage. Our forestry needs to change. We should more towards native forestry plantations and continuous rather than clear felling cover. That approach gives high-value timber. It would create 30,000 jobs in rural Ireland and it makes for brilliant storage of carbon, which we can then use in our building industry as a further store. This is viable and this is the way the world is going. This is what CAP can pay farmers for.

We should pay farmers for our high-quality food. I was so disappointed by what I heard on "Morning Ireland". One week after we had a big debate on the fodder crisis people were celebrating that we can now sell cheap meat cuts off to China. It seems we are back on the expansion path again. They say Larry Goodman is going to lead us forward into the great future for Irish agriculture. It may be great for Larry Goodman but, in my mind, not for Irish farming. Unfortunately, the Minister is shaking his head, but the problem is that Fine Gael is wedded to big production output increases. The policy worked in 2011 and 2012 when we were in the middle of the recession. Farming helped to lift us out of it. There were two or three good years with great growth and so on. Production increases were possible. The reality since then is that our soil and land can only carry so much production. What we should do is really specialise in specialising. We should stop importing so much fresh produce and start selling our good quality produce to local markets. We should stop the export of 70,000 live calves, which is the total so far this year.

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