Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Dairy farmers are struggling to make ends meet with the price of milk and dairy products starting to reduce while their costs are still increasing. This is a fight they can take on, but the fight they cannot take on at present is the dropping of nitrates from 250 kg per ha to 220 kg per ha. I attended a farm walk in Farnanes where I met a typical Irish farmer who has 71 cows. He is a married man with four young children. He has run his farm environmentally meticulously for many years. He has proper slurry spreading equipment and has done every other thing he had to do. If the nitrates drop from 250 kg per ha to 220 kg per ha, he will have to drop his number of cows from 71 to 55, 56 or 57 cows. If this is the case, he will face being wiped out and that is the case for many farmers. Will the Government plough ahead with the 250 to 220 nitrates drop?

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