Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would like to preface what I say here by asking anybody who speaks on this issue in the future to mind their language. In the past week, the rhetoric around rewetting in particular has been extreme and divisive. Rewetting is not flooding but who could blame any farmer who is busy on her land from thinking she is going to need a canoe if her farm neighbours Coillte land or Bord na Móna land.

I note too the talk just yesterday about culling the national herd, as if anybody, rural or urban, was under the illusion that we as a nation were rearing cattle into a long and happy retirement in our four green fields. This emotive talk might make cool headlines, but the issue is so critical for our children's future and for our island's future on a hotter planet that it will not be resolved in the media, on chat shows, in print or on the airwaves. It will be resolved by mutual respect and understanding about what needs to be done and how we can do it working together. We must do it because there is too much at stake to do otherwise. We all need to cool our jets, both literally and metaphorically. With records being broken this week alone in ice, air and surface water, it is no exaggeration to say that our children's future and humanity's future is right here in our hands as legislators. I believe we must be united in addressing this. We know that humans can do nothing in housing, health, transport or education unless we have a liveable planet. It is a fact, not an opinion, that there is no planet B.

On nature restoration and agriculture, I believe, as many people do, that farmers must be given incentives to make the necessary changes, not be given a rod for their backs. When I was a member of the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action we saw wonderful farmers who had radically changed their minds and their methods and would be only too delighted to help their farming colleagues and farming communities to do likewise. Space must be made in this conversation for them. Change can happen with the right support. I believe we should be communicating better with farmers about collaboration and incentives. The communication on this has been woeful.

In Sinn Féin, we believe the nature restoration law has the potential to do what it says and also to meet climate targets, if the necessary reforms and adjustments are made. We appreciate how farmers, some of whose families have been farming the same land for generations, are anxious about the Government's proposals, which are far from clear and lack the necessary detail. We know they are anxious about rewetting and its potential to damage livestock farmers in the midlands and the west. We do not just talk to farmers; we listen to them.

As a result, we know the worries of farmers operating on peat soils and, indeed, their issues around funding and property rights, which also need to be addressed. The Government needs to listen and not lecture. It needs to rely less on mandatory and more on winning buy-in and incentivise, not penalise, because we need good change, which requires agreement to make it happen. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The Government simply cannot order farmers to make the kind of changes it will not make itself. This kind of attitude makes communities dig their heels in. Although it is late, it is not too late to approach farmers in a more inclusive way, not with the big bata of government but with a juicy carrot. It is critical that the fear factor not just goes away but is put away. We are looking for transformation that is necessary to secure a future for human beings on a liveable planet. Making the transformation and taking that leap of faith is something we must do together. I just attended a meeting in Buswells Hotel with Wangari Kinoti from Action Aid. The people causing the rising fear factor are the same politicians who will give out about immigration and people coming into their hotels. The situation in Africa is serious. We better get serious about it. We have do this for each other because we need good, modern change for humanity. The planet will survive without us. Human life will not survive on this planet unless we get our act together and stop talking nonsense about this.

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