Anyone listening to Joe Healy and Eamon Ryan forming a mutual appreciation society on Sunday’s This Week programme on RTÉ Radio 1 might think the so-called “green wave” poses no problem for farming.

Scratch beneath the pleasantaries though and a different reality emerges.

The carbon footprint of Irish farming is a red line issue for the Green Party.

The IFA’s belief that dairy expansion should continue unfettered because our production is more emission efficient than that of other countries won’t cut much ice, especially when the plan is to maintain the suckler herd at current levels.

Will the Greens actually have any influence? They still have only two TDs. They gained more councillors, but fewer than Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin, and Labour. With a little under 6% of the vote, and a little over 5% of the seats, they are still a minority voice in Irish public life. That said, they will be a significant voice in the national debate, and farmers will have to get used to hearing everything they do being questioned more closely than ever before.

Farmers might well cheer on when Michael Healy-Rae lashes electric cars on Prime Time, but farming will achieve more if we sometimes engage and persuade rather than have the row all the time. Young voters and young consumers think green and we must explain ourselves, and justify ourselves, to them at every turn.

Farming families are a shrinking share of the vote. There was a time when pro-farming candidates such as Andrew Doyle and Brendan Smith might have sailed into the European Parliament, but both fell well short this time. Similarly, a candidate such as Mick Wallace running in a non-Dublin EU constituency would have struggled following the type of remarks he made about Irish dairying earlier this year, but he was comfortably elected.

Whatever about the green wave, it is notable that nine of the 16 MEPs from the island are women. One of them, Mairead McGuinness, will be one of the senior MEPs in the parliament, and has a knowledge of and passion for farming.

Michel Barnier is being spoken of as a potential candidate to become parliament president. He is a former French farm minister, and has been a friend to Ireland during the long Brexit process. He is currently the Brexit commissioner. The current EPP candidate for that job is Manfred Weber, who visited a dairy farm in Wexford back in April. We still have friends in high places.