The Oireachtas agriculture committee finally has a chair.

Cork north west Fianna Fáil TD Aindrias Moynihan is the man chosen to succeed Jackie Cahill in one of the most influential positions in politics when it comes to farming and the agri-food sector.

Moynihan comes from one of the most rural, most farming-dependant constituencies in the country. You might remember that it was he who organised the surreal sight of Taoiseach Micheál Martin on a buffalo during the election campaign.

His party and constituency colleague, Michael Moynihan, might feel a little aggrieved to have been passed over for this role. He has previously been the Fianna Fáil spokesperson on agriculture during their spell in opposition in 2011-2012, and is one of the few farmers in the current Oireachtas - Dáil or Seanad.

It’s a slight surprise that Fianna Fáil has retained this role. Most senior ministries switched between the party and coalition partners Fine Gael. In the lifetime of the last government, Fianna Fáil held both the ministry through Charlie McConalogue and the agriculture committee chair, through Cahill. Perhaps it’s a sign of how closely the two main parties of Government are working together that Martin Heydon is comfortable with having a Fianna Fáil politician “watching his back”, so to speak.

It's been a long time coming. The old agriculture committee held its last meeting on 6 November, almost six months ago. The subjects under discussion that day were governance issues in the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board, and TB. But the world has changed a lot since the dying days of the 33rd Dáil.

It turns out that they were the last days prior to Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the United States. And that has changed almost everything.

Trade tops the agenda

What are the main issues facing Moynihan and the new committee? Well, I would reckon that Mercosur occupied the last committee more than any other single issue over the 53 months of its tenure. Mercosur, which Ireland has strongly opposed at Government level for over a quarter of a century now, going back to Bertie Ahern’s first term in office, must now be viewed in the wider context of a world where it’s almost become the US versus the rest of the world, due to Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.

The EU itself says that “the EU-Mercosur agreement will open unprecedented access to the countries of Mercosur for European farmers and food producers”. For Irish farmers, that is like saying something would open unprecedented access for the hens to the fox’s den. The fundamental issues around equivalence of standards in relation to food production are unchanged. It was easier to progess those arguments when Bolsonaro was leading the Brazilian government, and driving a coach and four to any commitments Brazil had previously made toward protecting the Amazon rainforest from farming and deforestation.

For Irish farmers, that is like saying something would open unprecedented access for the hens to the fox’s den

But with Brazil’s current progressive government addressing climate change again, and with them potentially willing partners for Europe in matters beyond a mutual trade agreement, I expect to see the Mercosur deal pushed through this year.

Opposition pressure

So far, Martin Heydon has had a fairly free ride as minister. I’m sure he doesn’t expect his honeymoon period to last much longer. Perhaps it’s because prices are so good for sheep, cattle and indeed milk, but attendances at farmer meetings have been sparse so far this year. The farm organisations have, as yet, not found an issue with which to test the minister’s mettle. And the opposition has been pretty low-key so far. I would expect that Martin Kenny and Michael Fitzmaurice will both be on the new agriculture committee, and I would expect that they will, through that forum, start to ask uncomfortable questions of Government. And it could be that TB, the last farming issue discussed by the committee, will top the agenda when they finally sit down together.

Manifesto commitments

The general election saw some extraordinary sums of money pledged by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I analysed them here back in November.

It matters little that Sinn Féin actually outbid the other two main parties in terms of the money it pledged to farmers, because it is Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael who are in Government. And the promises they made are on the record and will be used at every step of the way by the opposition to highlight the gap between the promises made and the programmes delivered.

It was significant that the Programme for Government failed to include any budgetary commitments to farmers, despite the make-up of the Government and the scale of the costed commitments made by the two main partners. I doubt that Michael Lowry, Seán Canney, Michael Healy-Rae and company had any objection to those commitments. So where have the promises gone?

It’s predicable that the Government will point to the changed global economic outlook, and in particular to the challenges the Irish economy faces, when defending themselves against any accusation of reneging on those commitments so recently and so publicly made. And it’s inevitable that the opposition parties will dismiss such arguments.

The last time our economy faced a sudden shock, in 2020 during the first COVID-19 lockdown, the Government threw money at the situation to keep the economy oiled when the grease of daily commercial activity was so badly curtailed. And in 2013, when the economy was still in bother from the 2008 crash, Government investment in agriculture was made a priority, in the hope that our largest indigenous industry could help kick-start a recovery in rural areas, which were lagging behind the Dublin-centric revival underway.

And it worked. So saying we don’t have the money to protect and encourage farming is an argument that can be countered.

We can look forward to feisty debate on this and many other issues in the agriculture committee. It’s a forum that has enhanced the discourse around food production over the last 20 years in particular. It’s high time it was back functioning.