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

I too thank the Independent Group and especially Deputy Harkin for being honest and truthful in what she said.

What is wrong about this is that the Government is being ambivalent about the number of acres. It is not telling us the truth. There is no talk about compensation, and the Government just wants to ram this through. It is hitting the farmers on three fronts with these proposals: on the rewetting, on the culling of the cows and on the nitrates. What it is not talking about at all is what this is going to do to all the communities beside the farmers, as well as hurting the farmers. The housewife will pay more for her food, and there will be food scarcity. There is no thought in the world given to this. I do not expect any different from the Green Party, but I am so sorry that there are no Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael backbenchers sitting over there listening to this debate today, because this is where they should be. They have got the support of rural Ireland since the foundation of the State, and this is the way they are abdicating, and falling in behind the Green Party in what it is proposing.

This will break farmers financially. I am telling that the Minister of State that it will. It will cut production, and we have read that it will hurt their income by 29%. At the same time, the Minister of State and the rest of his gang, along with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are giving no credence at all to what carbon is being sequestered all around Ireland. He says it cannot be measured until 2027, but in the meantime, he wants to drive the farmers off the land and hurt them after they slaving and breaking their backs to drain the land. They got grants to do it, and they were encouraged to do it by a different crowd than the Green Party.

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