Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise with the Minister the very serious matter of how Government policy is being fine-tuned to cut farm production by rewetting, cutting dairy cow numbers and the nitrates directive. This will impact directly on farmers’ incomes, reduce vibrancy in every sector of rural communities and impact on food security and increase the cost of food to everyone in our country. As we export high-quality food products all over the world, who is going to replace us? Will they create a greater carbon footprint globally? We are all under the same sky. Are more people going to be left to starve as over 750 million are starving in different parts of the world? Is it going to be the same story as the briquettes and peat moss, which we now import because we cannot produce them ourselves?

At the same time, many farmers are sequestering carbon all over our country, more carbon than they emit. It is wrong to penalise and curtail farmers for producing when no credit or recognition is given to those who are sequestering carbon. We are being told that the measuring of sequestration will not take place until at least 2027. How can that be fair?

With regard to rewetting, as proposed, this obnoxious proposal will only affect farmers who have worked hard for generations to drain and improve their land, to make their holdings more productive and to get value out of fertiliser and nutrients. Rewetting will not affect farmers in the Golden Vale of Tipperary whose lands cannot be wetted even on the wettest of days, so this rewetting is discriminating against farmers on poorer-type lands. Are we going to let more land go wild with overgrowth and scrub? We could have a scenario at some stage where thousands of acres will go on fire, with fires burning across county bounds.

The Minister's party leader, the Tánaiste, lost it when I asked him over a year ago about the Government proposal to cull the dairy herd. He denied it but it is now clear that the Government is at it again. It is clear to me that the Government has no appreciation of farmers.

The nitrates directive regulations will impact many dairy farms while doing very little to improve water quality, and will automatically reduce cow numbers and milk production. If they cannot buy or rent extra land, how can they even compete with the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, who, on behalf of the State, is on the market competing for the same land? Are we going to have more acres like the 26,000 acres in the national park in Killarney completely overrun with deer that are out of control, killing people on our roads and robbing farmers’ grazing? For decades, people were vilified and criminalised by environmentalists if they touched a deer. Now, the same environmentalists are saying that the deer will have to be culled to help biodiversity. They have no problem with the other problems they are creating.

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