Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

-----that have led to that anger and fear.

This motion tells us that the answer is to keep on doing what we are doing, to keep on with the policies that enrich the Goodmans, the Dawn Meats and the large agribusinesses, threaten the future of family farms and sustainable agriculture and add to the climate chaos that we face. As large parts of humanity experience record heatwaves, record temperatures, floods and droughts - and records are broken daily - we are told in this motion that things are grand and should continue as they are. The motion tells us that reducing nitrates is a bigger threat to rural Ireland than climate change. It tells us that cutting dairy herd numbers is an unimaginable horror, just as we see real unimaginable horrors across the globe from climate change. Under the guise of defending ordinary farmers, it wants to defend the status quo that has proved so lucrative for a tiny minority and threatens the majority of farmers, workers and humanity.

Farmers must be at the forefront of deciding what changes we need and how they are implemented but what we have here is a Trojan horse, a motion that pretends to have concern for the fears of ordinary farmers but that in reality is about preserving the status quo, the inequality and the precarious living that farming communities may experience. We need a new deal on food and farming and a new just transition for the farmers affected. The status quoin a time of crisis cannot hold and neither can allowing food policy to be dictated by large business interests who have no concern for ordinary farmers or the environment. Their only concern is for their own profit margins.

We need to pay and reward farmers for adopting sustainable food production and we need to prioritise food sovereignty in this State. I have no doubt that is what ordinary farmers want too. I know they see through the Green Party's policies that try to target ordinary people's behaviour while leaving corporate and business elites untouched. I urge all those who are concerned by the crisis we face to differentiate between the fake moralism that we see here, the class snobbery of the Green Party and the fact that climate change is real, is here and is happening. Dealing with that should mean greater security for farmers and rural communities, not less. It should mean a real future for family farms and sustainable agriculture. It should not mean business as usual and the continuation of a system that yields millions and millions in profits for the Larry Goodmans of this world and others in the food processing industry, while leaving rural communities and farmers at the mercy of continued precarity and uncertainty.

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