Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to speak on two issues which may seem unconnected but I believe they are absolutely connected and, indeed, go to the core of the issues we face around agriculture and climate targets.

First, I wish to highlight what has been happening in our meat plants during the Covid crisis and recap on what has happened in them. Despite the Minister's bluster at the start of the crisis and the utter failure of the regulatory regime in the form of the Health and Safety Authority, it is clear that workers in meat plants were effectively sacrificed, bullied and intimidated into working in unsafe conditions throughout the crisis. It was not until the clusters and the numbers affected became too big to hide that belated action was taken. Even now, I am not content or confident that enough actions or safeguards are being taken to protect these workers. Why did the State and its agencies fail workers in meat plants so badly? The answer seems to be the same as to the answer to the question as to why we are failing in measures to tackle climate emissions in agriculture. It is not because the agricultural sector is so vital to our economy, which it is, nor is it because we support family farms and want to see a thriving rural community and sustainable farming, as most of us do, and it is not out of concern for farmers and their families. The workers in the meat plants, just like the beef farmers and others in this agriculture sector, are being failed because current policy has nothing to do with supporting farmers or the rural community. It is about supporting a corporate agrifood industry which benefits only a tiny few and generates massive profits for those at the top of the chain, their shareholders and CEOs. It does not support ordinary farmers and their families and it is certainly not supporting workers on the killing floors of the meat factories and abattoirs.

That brings us to the issues of climate and our policy on agricultural emissions. A false dichotomy or choice has been put out by people who claim to be the defenders of rural Ireland and loudly attack the Green Party on the basis that it is trying to destroy rural Ireland with proposals to cut the herd or nitrogen fertiliser use. Sometimes the descriptions used would have us believe this is the greatest threat since the Famine or Cromwell. We have greatly expanded the herd in recent years, with 20,000 cattle added to the dairy herd this spring. Under the current business as usual plans, cattle numbers and fertiliser use are expected to continue to increase over the next decade, with the former set to increase by 11% and the latter by 6%. This is driven by a policy of exporting to Asia and the Middle East. My question to those who raise outraged voices and claim to represent rural Ireland and farming interests is how this policy is going for people in rural Ireland, farmers and their families. How will the trend that is being defended improve matters for those families and farmers? Are standards of living and the building of sustainable farming communities improving? No, they are not.

Last year, I stood outside Leinster House in solidarity with farmers who were being crushed by the corporate bosses and the policies of this Government, farmers who had been screwed by the beef processors which were posting record profits as they cut the prices they gave to the farmers. How can anyone stand over a policy that is driving farmers to the wall and driving them out of the sector? The Minister cannot pretend he is a friend of the farmer when all he has to offer is more of the same, which will ensure that Larry Goodman and other corporate interests record yet another year of profits in the tens of millions of euro, which are funnelled in to offshore accounts where they avoid tax. The Minister cannot tell me this is a sustainable policy for farmers in Ireland.

Current farming and agricultural policy is not working for ordinary farmers and it is certainly not working for the environment or climate. This Government has given us more rhetorical commitments to reducing emissions and accepting the science of what actions we need to take. However, that policy is governed by the corporate interests I mentioned and not the interests of the farmers or climate.

Once again, we see bizarre and unscientific efforts to explain away methane emissions and confuse the effect methane has on climate by pretending that if we account for it differently, it will go away or the problem may not look as serious as it is. Science is screaming at us about this problem.

We can fool ourselves if we want. We can add up the emissions in various ways and we can pretend that offsets, sinks or taxes will allow us to continue polluting, but we cannot fool nature and we cannot fool the science of physics. My concern about the Green Party and its members in the Government talks that are currently under way is that they may be fooled into thinking that a coalition of the Minister's party with Fianna Fáil can deliver any of the measures required. If they believe that a 7% reduction will be achieved under a party merged with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, they are fooling themselves. They may think it may not happen in four years but it could happen in ten. I can guarantee them that with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael driving the policy, it will not happen in 100 years, and the seas will be washing over us.

The main danger in the narrative of these talks is that those of us who want action on climate change and on agricultural emissions are painted as the enemies of the farming community when nothing could be further from the truth. We support a reduction in herd sizes, a reduction in the use of nitrogen fertiliser and a programme of massive reforestation with non-commercial species for carbon storage, but we are also for breaking the cartel of meat processors and the large agrifood corporations that stand at the top of this pyramid. We support better prices for beef farmers and a basic income that supports them and their families so they can grow the food that we need to give us real food security in the decades ahead. We support sustainable farming and rural communities, not the vision that we are being given at the moment, which is about the interests of the corporations. Just as the measures that we need to take in our towns and cities to combat climate change can lead to a better and more sustainable life for ordinary people, so too can the steps that need to be taken in agriculture lead to better lives for farmers and the communities in rural Ireland.

Warmer homes, better public transport, and sustainable well-planned towns, villages and cities are not a threat to ordinary people, but if the vision of climate action is offered solely in a moralistic attack on people's personal behaviour while landing more and more taxes on them when they can barely get by, we will feed the climate sceptics and leave untouched the systemic causes of climate change and the vested interests that are driving them. In agriculture, if all we offer farmers are reduced herd numbers and restrictions on fertiliser use we leave them prey to the climate sceptics and the climate deniers whose agenda is to maintain the status quoand to hell with the planet and with the environment, but if we demand a real Green New Deal and see farmers as allies in this fight and reward them accordingly, we can build a constituency that can achieve climate targets and do it in a just and sustainable way.

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