This is a subscriber-only article
The Government has been accused of failing to outline which measures and funding streams will be used to achieve the bulk of farming’s legally-binding emissions reduction target of 25% by 2030.
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) claimed that the plan placed too much emphasis on “relatively insignificant” parts of farming sector, like organics, without addressing policies on the more mainstream dairy and beef sectors.
Its president Pat McCormack singled out the dairy sector as having been completely ignored in Wednesday’s Climate Action Plan for 2023.
McCormack stated that by continuing to skip over dairying, especially when discussing funding, “it will be simply impossible to get the numbers and momentum required to make this transition work”.
“We spend relative peanuts putting options in front of dairy and beef farmers while shoveling relatively vast sums at a tiny organics sector,” he commented.
“The plan actually states the need to put production diversification options for livestock farmers but then we see nothing and are offered nothing.
“If the Government wants these changes, then it is up to it to identify the areas that require meaningful change and then fund those farmers who wish to make those changes. But that’s not what we get.”
The dairy group leader referred to the mentions of dairy and in the plan as being vague aspirations which are being offered “derisory funding”.
“This has been the problem all along and it’s still the problem as can be seen from today’s plan.”
Just transition
McCormack also took aim at the lack of clarity surrounding the Just Transition Commission that is to “seek to protect the most vulnerable” during the move to climate neutrality.
He called on Government to set out who will oversee the commission and to outline what resources it will have to pass around.
“Because we’ll just end up with this same problem where scare funding is aimed at the margins while the substance of these issue – the family farm system that has to be preserved – is either ignored completely or has ‘peanut’ sums directed at it that will leave it unable to make the very transition that the whole Plan is ostensibly about effecting.”
SHARING OPTIONS: