Ireland is almost half way towards its rewetting target, says Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan.
“There are 33,000ha of land that is being rewetted as we speak, which is actually reducing real emissions,” he said.
Noting that the country has a rewetting target of “80,000ha or so”, Minister Ryan highlighted the progress that is being made, but said he wants to increase the rewetting levels currently seen.
The Green Party leader was speaking during a review of the Climate Action Plan 2023 at the Oireachtas Environment and Climate Action Committee on Thursday.
It is understood the rewetting of reclaimed land currently under way in Ireland is largely being carried out by State bodies such as Bord na Móna and through small-scale environment schemes.
Farmers stepping up
Minister Ryan also suggested that farmers are starting to see the “sense” in environmental measures.
He said the fact that the ACRES scheme was “massively oversubscribed” is a sign that progress is being made.
“The fact that in the last two and a half years the volume of organic farming has increased 300%, that sort of scale of expansion.
“The farm visits I see where farms are going into this lower-carbon, really smart direction, there are actually hundreds of people turning up,” he said.
The minister said that across the farm sector, there are loads of examples, suggesting farmers are moving in a “greener direction”.
Work to be done
However, Minister Ryan insisted that more work needs to be done to cut emissions from the farm sector.
“[For] the figures we’ll see in April, my expectation is there won’t be a huge change [agriculture’s emissions] for 2021-2022.
“In agriculture, there may well be reductions, because I think fertiliser use was down by something like 14%, which would obviously reduce emissions, but, at the same time, I’m quite certain our dairy herd continued to expand.
“Complacency cannot serve us because the overall numbers will probably, even with the fertiliser reduction, not see huge reduction because the herd size probably, the dairy side in particular, I’d imagine, increased,” he said.
The CSO published data this week which shows that Ireland’s national cattle herd reduced last year, but that the number of dairy cows increased by a marginal 5,000.
SHARING OPTIONS