Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

If the Minister supports the regulation in its present form, he will be a traitor to the people in rural Ireland. That is the fact. What has been proposed would make Cromwell blush when compared with what he tried to do to Ireland. The Minister used the word "voluntary". This is bringing into law a regulation that will affect people with land containing peaty soils. The Minister should go down to Kerry, where most of the cows for the dairy sector are reared, to the west, to the north west and out to the midlands, where land has been reclaimed for years and where families make a living. Whoever will be in government can listen to these words very carefully. Whether the Government signs off on this, whether it supports it with the EU or whether it wants to be a lackey for the EU, we in rural Ireland will stand against this and fight it. No EU diktat and no Government Minister in Dublin will decide our private property rights, decide how we will farm our land or take us off land that we have drained, looked after and reared families on down through the years.

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