I wish to raise with the Minister the very serious matter of how Government policy is being fine-tuned to cut farm production by rewetting, cutting dairy cow numbers and the nitrates directive. This will impact directly on farmers’ incomes, reduce vibrancy in every sector of rural communities and impact on food security and increase the cost of food to everyone in our country. As we export high-quality food products all over the world, who is going to replace us? Will they create a greater carbon footprint globally? We are all under the same sky. Are more people going to be left to starve as over 750 million are starving in different parts of the world? Is it going to be the same story as the briquettes and peat moss, which we now import because we cannot produce them ourselves?

At the same time, many farmers are sequestering carbon all over our country, more carbon than they emit. It is wrong to penalise and curtail farmers for producing when no credit or recognition is given to those who are sequestering carbon. We are being told that the measuring of sequestration will not take place until at least 2027. How can that be fair?

With regard to rewetting, as proposed, this obnoxious proposal will only affect farmers who have worked hard for generations to drain and improve their land, to make their holdings more productive and to get value out of fertiliser and nutrients. Rewetting will not affect farmers in the Golden Vale of Tipperary whose lands cannot be wetted even on the wettest of days, so this rewetting is discriminating against farmers on poorer type lands. Are we going to let more land go wild with overgrowth and scrub? We could have a scenario at some stage where thousands of acres will go on fire, with fires burning across county bounds.

The Minister's party leader, the Tánaiste, lost it when I asked him over a year ago about the Government proposal to cull the dairy herd. He denied it but it is now clear that the Government is at it again. It is clear to me that the Government has no appreciation of farmers.

The nitrates directive regulations will impact many dairy farms while doing very little to improve water quality, and will automatically reduce cow numbers and milk production. If they cannot buy or rent extra land, how can they even compete with the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, who, on behalf of the State, is on the market competing for the same land? Are we going to have more acres like the 26,000 acres in the national park in Killarney completely overrun with deer that are out of control, killing people on our roads and robbing farmers’ grazing? For decades, people were vilified and criminalised by environmentalists if they touched a deer. Now, the same environmentalists are saying that the deer will have to be culled to help biodiversity. They have no problem with the other problems they are creating.

I thank Deputy Healy-Rae. I want to underline the Government's support for the family farm and the principle of that all over Ireland. I negotiated with the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, over the last number of budgets, significant increases in the funding for his Department. He successfully negotiated a new strategic Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, plan worth almost €10 billion out to 2027, which resulted in an increase of 50% in the national contribution compared to the previous plan and provided for an extra €1 billion for families under that plan.

The Deputy made a point in regard to the dairy herd. The Food Vision dairy committee, which includes the farm organisations, has made a proposal along those lines. The Government has made no such decision in regard to a voluntary reduction in the dairy herd. Just to be clear on that, it is a proposal that has come from the committee, which includes the farm organisations, but the Government has not made any such decision in regard to that.

On the EU nature restoration law, as the Deputy knows, a proposed general approach was agreed earlier this week at the ministerial Council in Luxembourg, which was attended by both the Minister, Deputy Ryan, and the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. It gives the next Council Presidency a mandate to enter a trilogue phase with the Commission and the Parliament, leading to full ratification by the end of this year. Separately, the environment committee of the European Parliament considered its proposed amendments to the original text on Thursday of last week, 15 June. Voting took place on an amendment-by-amendment basis and did not conclude due to the time constraint. The debate will resume on 27 June. Both the agriculture and fisheries committees have voted not to support the regulation. It is our position, as a Government, that we hope to see the Parliament now move in line with the position of the Council because the position of the Council is one that we can support.

As previously outlined, Ireland remains supportive of the ambition and the principles underpinning the proposed regulation. However, the challenge involved in meeting the ambition proposed remains very significant, as we acknowledge. It includes the extremely tight timeframes for the quantification of targets and measures, for the preparation of a national restoration plan and for the delivery of targets. There will be a need for a considerable amount of scientific data collection, collation and analysis, including emerging information from the land use review, and the resources required for preparing, implementing and monitoring the national restoration plan are not currently in place and would need to be put in place.

This issue has some way to run yet. The European Council has agreed a position and we hope the Parliament will move in line with that. We support the position that the Council has adopted because Ireland was very much part of, and helped to shape the outcome of, those discussions.

I thank the Minister for his reply. The Government is not being truthful to the farmers. It is not telling them what is needed or what is going to happen. Earlier this year, the Government agreed that farmers would have to cut their emissions by 25% and said this would be achievable. The Government should tell us what it is going to do and what farmers have to do because farmers want to know what they have to do. Farmers are already sequestering carbon and they are getting no credit for that. How can the Government say that farmers must cut production and cut their emissions when the Government does not know how much emissions they are already sequestering? That is the crucial point. The Government does not know what they are sequestering and it does not give a damn, apart from putting farmers under pressure by telling them they will have to rewet their lands and cull their cows.

The Government is ambivalent about the truth. When I asked the Tánaiste over 12 months ago, he went mad, he went wild, and he said that I was making it up - I read it myself. Here we are again, and the Government still will not tell the farmers what they have to do, only that they must cut production, while at the same time they are sequestering way more carbon than they are emitting.

The farmers know the truth.

To be honest, I would be more optimistic than the Deputy. I recently visited the Farm Zero C project, with which Deputy Michael Collins will be very familiar, in Shinagh, Bandon, where the four west Cork co-ops have come together to develop, on a commercial basis, a farm that is environmentally sustainable. They took us through all of the different aspects of what they are doing - testing different feedstuffs, changing and reducing the nature of the fertiliser, experimenting with multispecies forms of swards and different grass types, and so on. They are making incredible progress and doing it on a commercially viable basis. I have no doubt that with the support of Science Foundation Ireland, Teagasc and all of the partners who are working very closely with the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, his Department and the stakeholders – the farm organisations themselves and the individual farmers - we will chart a way through this.

It is important to say that the latest text that has been agreed provides for very significant flexibility. There will now be a process of engagement between the Minister and the sector to make sure that what we signed up to is achievable, is in Ireland's interests and recognises the strategic importance of agriculture to this country and that we already have a sustainable system of food production here, which will continue long into the future.

What about food security and the increased cost of food?