Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will be continuing that; we have to. As a country that is so lucky given its place on the globe and the fact that the jet stream comes all the way up and keeps our climate very mild and gives us great growing conditions and great capacity to be productive regarding food, we must appreciate that gift and produce the food we need because many other parts of the world do not the gift and capacity we have but they need that food.

The world population is increasing. It will reach close to 10 billion by 2050. It is getting harder and harder in many climate-vulnerable parts of the world to produce food. Our task, therefore, is to keep being productive and to back family farms producing food, which is massively important, while in the process reducing significantly the emissions footprint of that food as we produce it, and then to export it to those countries that need it. We need to keep that going, to back our farmers and their great work, and to back our industry and its great work. We also need to contribute to significantly reducing our emissions, which we all have to do across all sectors of the economy to address the challenges that are making it so hard to produce food in many climate-vulnerable countries.

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