The chairperson of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine has condemned the proposed EU Nature Restoration Law currently under debate in the European Parliament.
Fianna Fáil TD Jackie Cahill is opposed to the mandatory rewetting targets being proposed by some members of the parliament.
He welcomed comments last week from Irish MEP Billy Kelleher – a party colleague of Cahill’s – who stated that he is unable to support any move to implement mandatory rewetting of farmland.
There is currently a proposal on the table in the parliament of restoring 30% of previously drained agricultural land by 2030, of which 50% is to be rewetted, and restoring 50% of such land by 2050, of which 66% is to be rewetted.
Concerns have also been raised in the past over the definitions of ‘restoring’ and ‘rewetting’ – and whether the proposed law actually draws a distinction between the two actions.
Speaking today (Monday, May 15), Tipperary TD Cahill said: “The suggestion that mandatory restoration and rewetting of land would be acceptable to people in rural Ireland is ludicrous. The proposal of a 30% restoration target is just not acceptable and will be vigorously resisted.
“There is a significant amount of marginal land in Ireland that has been upgraded to arable productive pasture, involving huge investment and labour by generations who carried out this work. Farmers will not allow that land to be interfered with,” he added.
“The rewetting of the country’s bogs can have a significant impact on farms in the locality of those bogs and the impact that this would have on the water table would by very difficult to measure and determine.”
Cahill said that there have been prior examples of EU policy reducing the economic value of Irish farmland, citing land designations for biodiversity and nature.
“We have seen how, with the stroke of a pen, decision makers in Brussels have decimated the capital value of land here. Farmers in areas where their land was designated had the value of their capital reduced drastically overnight with little or no compensation,” he commented.
“This will not be tolerated again. Farmers do not want compensation, they want to farm their land and produce food,” he added.
“Land that is being actively farmed in this country cannot be interfered with. It would seriously threaten the viability of many family farms across the country and have a devastating impact on the rural economy.”
Cahill called on the government to oppose the “extreme” measures coming from the European Parliament.
He also reiterated Billy Kelleher’s stance that the European Commission – which drafts proposed EU laws – should scrap the current draft law and “approach this matter from scratch”.
He said that he had spoken with Fianna Fáil leader and Tánaiste Micheál Martin on the issue.