The “stakes are high” for maintaining Ireland’s nitrates derogation at all, Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue has warned.
“Unless we’re bringing down the nitrogen we spread and unless we’re actually improving water quality, we’re not going to be able to continue to get derogations at European level,” he said at the Teagasc Moorepark open day on Tuesday.
The minister warned that there is a “complacency” among Ireland’s farmers and farm organisations that because Ireland is a grass-based production system that the European Commission will continue to grant a nitrates derogation, long-term.
“That complacency, we have to knock that because we have a challenge on our hands to ensure that we keep [the derogation] and we have to work to keep it,” he urged.
Negotiations
Minister McConalogue highlighted that, by 2025, Ireland will be one of just two EU member states holding a derogation and that all others have to farm at 170kg N per hectare.
He warned farmers that retaining the derogation was not a national decision, but one at the mercy of other EU member states and the Commission.
The minister emphasised the importance of seeking “flexibilities” in the new derogation negotiations to come, beyond the current midterm review, for 2025, but acknowledged that he does not know if these can be secured.
“I fully know there would be much, much bigger implications of us not getting a [derogation] renewal or if we get a phased-out renewal,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Minister McConalogue dismissed suggestions that losing the derogation would be a cost-effective cow cull as “cynical”, stating that was not his objective.
SHARING OPTIONS