Preserving the CAP budget will be highly dependent on making the policy “greener”, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned.

The Taoiseach stressed that Ireland was committed to securing the budget for CAP, and it was willing to pay more into the overall EU budget to do so.

Speaking at a policy debate on Ireland’s Agri-food Strategy to 2030, Taoiseach Varadkar said: “We need to … incentivise, encourage, [and] remunerate farmers and industry to reduce emissions, to produce green energy, and to promote biodiversity and to make it financially worthwhile to do so.”

He added that while agriculture needs to reduce its emissions, people have to understand that Ireland is an island that produces food.

Talk is the easy part, we have to get buy-in from each of our farmers to make sure that herd reduction doesn’t come into play

“There is a difference in food production and transport, or energy. There are ways to produce energy in ways that are renewable. We can change our transport system. But when it comes to agriculture, it is a bit different.

“All forms of agriculture, including horticulture, produce CO2 emissions. And we need to continue to produce food. And we achieve nothing by just displacing production to another country.”

Farmer buy-in

Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed said farmer buy-in would be needed when it comes to meeting emission reduction targets.

However, he warned: “Talk is the easy part, we have to get buy-in from each of our farmers to make sure that herd reduction doesn’t come into play.”

While the European Commission has proposed a cut to the CAP budget, deputy director in the agriculture wing of the Commission Michael Scannell offered some hope to farmers.

Scannell said agriculture did well “in the final furlong” of budget negotiations.

He said: “The importance and weight of agriculture will become more and more influential in the final phase of the negotiations”.