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

I thank the Minister for his reply. The Government is not being truthful to the farmers. It is not telling them what is needed or what is going to happen. Earlier this year, the Government agreed that farmers would have to cut their emissions by 25% and said this would be achievable. The Government should tell us what it is going to do and what farmers have to do because farmers want to know what they have to do. Farmers are already sequestering carbon and they are getting no credit for that. How can the Government say that farmers must cut production and cut their emissions when the Government does not know how much emissions they are already sequestering? That is the crucial point. The Government does not know what they are sequestering and it does not give a damn, apart from putting farmers under pressure by telling them they will have to rewet their lands and cull their cows.

The Government is ambivalent about the truth. When I asked the Tánaiste over 12 months ago, he went mad, he went wild, and he said that I was making it up - I read it myself. Here we are again, and the Government still will not tell the farmers what they have to do, only that they must cut production, while at the same time they are sequestering way more carbon than they are emitting.

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