Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is shameful and pitiful that they have yielded to the interests of the few over the many. I say this with utter dismay because I have regard for my colleagues across this House.

It is mind-boggling that politicians are railing against restoring nature here and in Europe and are fighting to defend a broken system of overproduction and excessive intensification.

The agrifood industry does not represent the interests of farmers; rather, it represents a perverse reality where farmers have been driven by intensification to lower margins and longer hours. Farmers do not want to be part of a system that pays them poorly in the first instance and, when it does, pays them to engage in environmental degradation of the land they love and nature and wildlife they know better than almost anyone. They do not want to stand over the collapse of nature or the live export trade. Agriculture is the backbone of rural Ireland. It always has been, but for almost the entirety of our history it has been sustainable and can be sustainable again. The nature restoration law is a way to get it back onto that path, a path that works for farmers where they are paid for environmental services and their hard work is not contributing to the destruction of nature but rather the preservation and protection of it.

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