Up to 85 farmers turned out in support of an Irish Farmers’ Association’s (IFA) protest, which is taking place at the Convention Centre in Dublin.
The Climate Action Bill is the focus of today’s IFA protest, which is understood to be moving on to Leinster House shortly.
Speaking to Agriland, IFA president, Tim Cullinan said that the organisation is mobilising today to send a clear message to Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan and government, ahead of a Dáil debate on the bill later this evening.
“The concerning issue today is the Climate Action Bill which will more than likely be voted on tonight,” the IFA president said.
“If it goes through in its current form, it will give extremely draconian powers to Minister Eamon Ryan.”
He outlined the three main issues that the IFA have with the bill in its current form.
“We have put forward three reasonable amendments and we haven’t been able to get the minister to take those amendments on board.
“Obviously, this is very concerning from a farming point of view, and for the entire farming sector.
“The first amendment is about removals – about the climate that farmers are removing from the atmosphere, have been doing for years. And by this I mean sequestering the carbon into hedgerows, trees and grassland and we want it explicitly documented in the bill that farmers will be rewarded for what they are removing from the atmosphere and that it will be accounted for in the carbon budgets.”
He said the IFA wants to get to a point of “net carbon where farmers get an allowance for what they are removing from the atmosphere and a balance of what they are emitting”.
“The second amendment relates to biogenic methane. This was clearly identified in the Programme for Government and this gas is different to that from buses or airplanes or trucks, and needs to be accounted for differently. We want that clearly identified by the minister.
“The third amendment relates to carbon leakage and we know that here in Ireland we are one of the best in the world to produce food from a grass-based system, we are the most efficient in the world from a carbon, dairy and beef production point of view as well.”