ICMSA’s ‘deep concerns’ on proposed Climate Action Bill

THE president of the ICMSA has written to TDs expressing the association’s deep concerns in relation to the proposed Climate Action Bill and its potential impact on the Irish agriculture sector. Pat McCormack said that “as the farm organisation most associated with Ireland’s unique family farm model”, his organisation was “particularly anxious about the Bill’s impact on that pillar support of rural Ireland”. Mr McCormack, pictured right, outlined their main concerns as “the overall anti-farm direction of the Climate Action Bill, the absence of any clear economic analysis of highly probable effects and its proposal to effectively hand over the decision making on this critical matter to an unelected council”.

He said that any one of these concerns would require detailed response from the Government and supporters of the Bill, but “taken together, and unanswered as they presently are, we think it grossly irresponsible and reckless to allow passage of the Bill as it stands”.

“It is simply unacceptable that Ireland’s biggest and most successful indigenous economic activity, farming and food production, is casually endangered in the way it most assuredly is by this Climate Action Bill,” he said.

Mr McCormack said

TDs must ensure that adequate protections for our farming and wider agrifood sector are included in the Climate Action Bill before it is passed through the Oireachtas.” He insisted that Irish farmers recognise their environmental obligations and were, and would continue to, respond as speedily and effectively as resources and research allow.

But he said that “we cannot accept the idea that our sector, usually the only meaningful commercial activity in our districts can be shutdown with the thousands of individuals and families involved being told to ‘diversify’ where no such opportunity exists.”