Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the European Council's conclusions. In the seven pages of the conclusions that focus on the CAP, there are nine references to climate and climate change and one to food. This shows the change in focus at European level with regard to food. In fact, there was no reference whatsoever to the issue of food security. Surely, in the context of what we have seen in recent months with Covid-19, and because the primary focus of the Council meeting was Covid-19, the issue of food security would have come up. Right across Europe we have seen panic buying and supermarket shelves left empty. In Ireland, we have seen how protecting food supplies has impacted on levels of Covid-19 in our meat plants, and yet the issue of food security is not referenced in any of the Council documents.

The Commissioner on Environment, Oceans and Fisheries recently told a meeting of the European Parliament's agriculture committee that food security is no longer a major concern for the European Union. The Commissioner went on to say that other challenges are dominating the European food system, such as food waste, over-consumption, obesity and the food system's overall environmental footprint. We need to reassess the issue of food security in the context of Covid-19.

The concept of food security is no longer an abstract consideration but a real issue. Both food security and resilience need to be embedded in our key objectives with regard to the CAP as well as securing and enhancing farming in its wider context of the economy, along with the social, cultural and environmental well-being of communities throughout the country.

Earlier the Taoiseach spoke about the overall reduction in the CAP budget as not being as severe as initially projected. However, we are looking, even at constant values, at a €39,000 million cut over the seven years of the budget. This does not take into consideration inflation over the past seven years. I accept it was a significant challenge to the Government, particularly in the context of not being able to have bilateral meetings because of Covid-19. However, the impact of these cuts will be a challenge for communities throughout the country and the agricultural sector in particular.

I acknowledge the special allocation of €300 million in recognition of the structural challenges we face in Ireland. I spoke about that when the new agriculture Minister was appointed last week. I hope we will see investment in a farm retirement scheme to encourage farmers to hand over the land to younger farmers, especially in the livestock and suckler sector where such a scheme is urgently needed.

In the context of climate, we are asleep at the wheel in terms of putting our best foot forward. Our own climate action plan sets out a target for reducing agricultural emissions by 10% between 2017 and 2030. Based on our current suckler cow numbers, emission reductions of close to 10% have already been achieved between 2018 and 2019 alone. While we have achieved that 13-year target in just 24 months, albeit for the wrong reasons, and while it may help to meet our national climate targets, in a perverse way it will do more damage to the planet in terms of global warming. That is because we count climate emissions based on the country where the food is produced, not on where that food is actually consumed. Even though 90% of our beef is exported, Ireland is penalised for being the most carbon-efficient beef exporter in the European Union because the rules state that responsibility is on the producer rather than the consumer of that food product. Relatively carbon-efficient beef production in Ireland can therefore be replaced throughout the European Union with beef from the Amazon basin that is 35 times worse from an environmental perspective. That is okay according to the climate mathematicians. It is not okay, however, for our atmosphere.

We have a CAP which regulates food production in member states except when it comes to climate emissions when there is a national cap, not an EU-wide one. This completely undermines carbon-efficient food production in favour of cheap food, regardless of its climate impact and from where it comes. We need an EU-wide methane cap for agriculture which supports carbon-efficient beef production in Ireland and which is good at reducing global climate emissions. It needs to support grass-fed beef on low intensity agriculture such as that produced in Ireland which has a lower negative impact on soil erosion, biodiversity and nutrient leaching than other beef production models. This is another fact conveniently ignored by those who focus on farming being purely a climate problem. Grass-based systems on disadvantaged land types in much of Ireland, removing carbon from the atmosphere, and converting it, by producing beef, into a human protein on land that is not suitable for tillage crops is again being ignored in terms of the type of agricultural model we have here. That does not mean that agriculture and farming should get a free pass. The fact is that managing our land use better can take more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere while reducing harmful effects on climate and oceans far quicker than just shutting down agriculture itself.

I find it disappointing that we have all these references to climate in the communiqué from the European Commission. We have a new Government in place which is talking about the need for more climate-orientated agriculture. We have a CAP focused on that. However, in last year's budget, the Minister for Finance allocated €3 million to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to pilot new agri-environmental schemes to fulfil our climate action objectives in 2020. Yet the Department told me last week that it is only developing those plans. It will soon be August 2020 but the Department is only considering what it is doing. Clearly, it is planning to launch this initiative at the ploughing championships. Somebody forgot to tell the Department there will be no ploughing championships this year. It looks like we will have to have to wait until September 2021 until we get this initiative. We need to see movement on environmental schemes that are farmer-orientated and implemented in a practical manner by farmers now, not next year or the year after that.

I welcome the proposal to introduce an EU-wide tax on non-recyclable plastic. As an environment Minister at European Council level, I advocated on behalf of this. However, the officials in Merrion Street were opposed to it. They felt that if we advocated such a tax across Europe on non-recyclable plastic, which we need to eradicate quickly, then it would undermine our opposition to a digital tax. I do not think it undermines that argument. Ireland should be to the fore in Europe in reducing non-recyclable plastic, particularly in light of the fact that Ireland is one of the largest generators of non-recyclable plastic at domestic level. We need to drive that particular agenda forward quickly.

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