Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Globally, consumers want food that has a low environmental impact, which provides a huge opportunity for Ireland. There are three aspects to this that need to be capitalised on. Ireland has the lowest carbon footprint for milk in the EU and the fifth lowest carbon footprint for beef because we use grass to produce milk and beef. Ireland has one of the lowest levels of forestry cover in Europe. Trees and hedges help to reduce climate change effects as they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. My colleagues and I have consistently campaigned for the Government to tackle the licensing bottleneck to enable forestry planting and harvesting. The harvesting of trees is taking too long. Carbon gets locked into wood and wood products. When this happens, new trees can be replanted and the cycle of storage happens again.

What I want to say to everyone in Ireland and everyone in this House, particularly those on my right who are completely out of touch with reality, is that Ireland is 0.01 in terms of carbon in Europe and 0.04 globally. I want to point out to our Government and a lot of those on the left in this House that all we are doing is importing products from countries that are 40% and 50% of the problem in terms of global emissions. Wake up. We want to save the planet but the Government is killing everyone in Ireland with price increases because we are importing everything. Why not encourage people in Ireland to produce their own products and not kill this world?

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