Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is dead right. I do not think it was a surprise for him when he saw the three main contributors to the stress. In any of his dealings with constituents, with farmers down in Cork or at the farmers' meetings that I and my ministerial colleagues have, the same points keep coming up. Farmers feel blamed when the debate about the environment comes up. As the Deputy says, farmers are custodians of the land. I want to put on the record that we as a Government have farmers' backs. We will continue to articulate the important role farmers play in food production, in feeding a population far bigger than ours here in Ireland, but also in contributing hugely to our rural economy. That is vital because of the spin-off benefit that has. Their role is really valued. At the same time we need to articulate clearly on national media debates and all the rest, and we all have our opportunity to do this, that farmers are on a journey to produce food more sustainably in the future and are part of the solution to the climate challenge. We all need to call out any commentators in the environmental area who seek to paint everything as black and white, who seek to paint people to blame or not to blame. Farming is making a huge contribution through making its activity more environmentally friendly into the future, improving water quality, reversing biodiversity loss and all those measures. Farmers are at the heart of that and they should not be blamed for the damage and the challenges we have.

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