James Bannon (Fine Gael)

Misleading this House and the farming community is a resigning matter. To refer to the Minister as "the grim reaper" or the personification of the death of Irish farming is to describe someone who has single-handedly set about destroying the Irish agricultural sector. This has precipitated the exit from the land by so many farmers whose livelihoods are being destroyed by the implementation of the nitrates directive. The directive which the Minister signed into law against all common sense, includes regulations that are unworkable, impractical and not based on accurate scientific information.

He further compounded this iniquity by failing to suspend the introduction of this regulation in light of the revised scientific evidence. The Minister had the nerve to stand in this House last December and tell me that he had the support of all the farming organisations when he signed the directive into law. In case the Minister has any desire to deny this or suffers from memory loss as regards his words, he said: "They, the farming organisations, were prepared to support hard decisions because they knew that is the only way to deal with the imposition which falls on us following the introduction of the nitrates directive."

This is quite extraordinary. I have not met one farmer or farm leader who gave any indication whatsoever they were prepared to support the Minister's actions on this issue. Conscious as I am of the Minister's tendency to become somewhat heated, as witnessed in this House last week——