Assurances on the “voluntary” aspect of the Nature Restoration Law by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue are “in direct contradiction of published facts”.
This is according to the president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) Pat McCormack who said that the minister made an already confused situation even more “muddled and obscure”.
In an interview with Agriland during the Bord Bia trade mission to Shanghai, China, Minister McConalogue said that he is determined to ensure that any outcome or any ask of farmers under the EU’s Nature Restoration Law will “only be voluntary”.
However, McCormack said that as published and as explained, there is “nothing voluntary” about the proposed Nature Restoration Law.
“The state will be able to apply the law and tell farmers that portions of their land must be rewetted in accordance with this law.
“It is simply not the case that farmers will be able to reject the suggested actions, as if they were guidelines or recommendations. This is a law and adherence to a law is not voluntary – it is demanded on pain of prosecution.
“The same as with any and every other law,” the ICMSA president said.
McCormack said he understood that the minister was trying to assure farmers that he was still lobbying for some “leeway, opt-out or derogation” from the act, and that was to be “commended”.
Nature Restoration Law
However, McCormack said that “it was of an entirely different order to the suggestion that obedience to the Nature Restoration Law was, or could be, voluntary”.
If that is the case, the association’s president believes the government should point out where in the proposed law it stated that this would be voluntary for individual landowners.
McCormack said that the government is “in a hole and still digging furiously”.
“No single issue was more certain to cause widespread rural discontent and dissatisfaction than the idea that the state was now going to effectively order farmers to reverse generations of hard work and investment, to take massive areas of productive land out of commission,” he added.
Farmers will not be “fooled” by the notion that public lands will be used to meet environmental commitments up to 2030, he said, and if this act is passed in its current structure, there will be a legal obligation on some private landowners to rewet part of their lands.
Such a situation would be “intolerable”, he added.
Minister must ‘clear up’ the matter
The ICMSA president said that matter can only be cleared up at this stage by a categorical assurance by Minister McConalogue on behalf of the Irish state that there will be no compulsory aspect to any roll-out of the law in Ireland at any stage in the future.
“This assurance must be included in the law agreed at EU level,” McCormack, who also stressed that the government needs to spell out its position on this law, said.
“We have MEPs from two government parties stating that they will vote against the law – and they are to be commended – but the government itself seems to be adopting a different position.
“The general public and landowners have a right to know what the government’s position is and to have basic level of respect and honesty shown to them.
“If the minister is as certain as his remarks in China indicate, then giving an assurance that has been written into the EU legislation shouldn’t be a problem,” the ICMSA president said.