Danny Healy-Rae warns fertiliser costs threaten farmers' future
Danny Healy-Rae addresses the Dail debate with farming representatives on rising fertiliser costs, the CBAM charge and carbon policies, and their impact on Irish farmers. He urges engagement from the Minister for Agriculture and raises concerns about imports from Northern Ireland and generational renewal.
Rising costs and CBAM charge: Danny Healy-Rae outlines how last year’s good prices for beef and dairy have been followed by sharp increases in input costs, driven by fertiliser price spikes, war-related supply shocks and the new CBAM charge treated like a carbon tax. He warns the charge deters fertiliser purchases, raises production costs and risks transferring those costs to consumers across towns and cities.
Impact on farmers and policy asks: Healy-Rae says there is currently nothing to replace chemical fertiliser at scale, highlights the role of grass in production and carbon sequestration, and presses for Department of Agriculture action. He calls for engagement with Northern Ireland on a harmonised fertiliser register, questions the effect of additional carbon-related levies on contractors and farmers, and warns of the threat to generational renewal in farming.
Rising costs and CBAM charge: Danny Healy-Rae outlines how last year’s good prices for beef and dairy have been followed by sharp increases in input costs, driven by fertiliser price spikes, war-related supply shocks and the new CBAM charge treated like a carbon tax. He warns the charge deters fertiliser purchases, raises production costs and risks transferring those costs to consumers across towns and cities.
Impact on farmers and policy asks: Healy-Rae says there is currently nothing to replace chemical fertiliser at scale, highlights the role of grass in production and carbon sequestration, and presses for Department of Agriculture action. He calls for engagement with Northern Ireland on a harmonised fertiliser register, questions the effect of additional carbon-related levies on contractors and farmers, and warns of the threat to generational renewal in farming.
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Transcript
Cathaoirleach, I'm glad to get the opportunity and I want to welcome our visitors here today and ICOS and the Farming Contractors of Ireland. I know it's the kind of a day you'd like to be anywhere else, maybe rather than here inside, but we appreciate you coming in and look, I'm around long enough to know now that farmers had a good year last year and if ever farmers have one good year out of five, they seem to get penalised the next year and that has been happening over and over again. The thing keeps evolving all the time and cattle and beef, dairy prices were good last year and we kind of all were suspecting or expecting that something would happen and there we have it, the fertiliser is way up and like we can understand the way that because of the war and the carry on there, but this CBAM charge that's the same as carbon tax, which is to actually deter people from buying fertiliser and that's what was intended and now they're maybe regretting it because they didn't realise the war was going to happen and everything is coming together, but look, we're a very small country and we should appreciate what farmers are doing and the product and whatever it is, beef or dairy or whatever it is, we should really appreciate them and if costs are going to go up, at the end of the day, to the consumers in signing town and signing our cities and all through the country, they're going to pay the pipers because someone will have to pay it. Farmers or anyone involved in production of food, they're not Mother Theresa's, Mother Theresa is gone and for to keep going and to stay working and I mean we had the grain growers in here and they were promised this and that and now we can see that this year they're going to be worse off than they were last year and like Deputy Willie said about the sugar factory, I mean we won't really miss the last day until they're gone, to see the grand grain fields, golden grain fields in July and August and it's grand of course and we need the feed and we need the straw and desperately down our way and them are the things we'll miss but look, I suppose the North of Ireland and the UK, they're certainly paying North Sea Ban tax and I can understand that, I wouldn't blame fellas for going over the border for to bring down grain now and I'm working it out there in my head, just on the Sea Ban alone for 40, 200, Arctic's well capable of bringing a load like that and lead loads down, they'll be saving 2,000 Euros and maybe more as well, we must enquire more into it because we had to do it in Corbett and we see things changing and I regret that the Department of Agriculture and the Minister for Agriculture isn't here to listen to this debate this evening because he'll get time to look at it at some point and I hope he will but we're in a desperate state now with the cost of it and the Sea Taxes are saying there look, that for every one kg of reduction in chemical fertiliser profitability reduced on the average 4.14 hectares due to the requirement of blessed forage, that is why we lose 4.14 Euros for not spreading the amount of fertiliser that we need and that we should be spreading and it's all about production and getting value out of the grass and if we don't have grass we won't feed cattle, we won't feed cows and it's as simple as that, you see there's nothing to replace fertiliser because like when they took John Egan off the day playing Dublin and he was just at the score of a point but that day they really didn't have anyone better to bring on, they took him off and he had to switch, we have nothing to replace fertiliser at this time and trying to get rid of it, Van der Lijn or whatever trying to cut our production one way or another and at the same time I can't understand it, they want to bring in beef from Brazil and Argentina, I can't understand, we're a small little country in the middle of the wild ocean and trying to survive, if we put out every light in the country we should only make a difference of 0.13% in the whole worldwide context, we're all under the one sky and that's the difference we make trying to change the weather, we won't, if we were at it from secularum we won't be able to change the weather and we should realise that the imminent climatologist will tell you we shouldn't be doing what we're doing because we shouldn't be hurting people financially in their pockets, cut down emissions by all means and do the best he can and that's what he said but do not hurt the people financially or be hurt doing that because that's not right he said, he actually died last year. Again I say, do what you can for the farmers in the line of help from the co-op side but we must really see can we get fertiliser down from the north of Ireland at this point in time and for next year we must see and make more efforts and ensure that the Minister for Agriculture, if he's talking about generational renewal and getting farmers at it, he must deal with this thing, look there's only a second left for me to say something and I welcome you here again. I wouldn't comment on whether you should bring fertiliser in from Northern Ireland, we would engage with the department to encourage them to work with their northern colleagues to ensure that they have a register in the north as well, I mean it would be wrong that people could bring in fertiliser from the north to avoid having their fertiliser purchases put on the register, that would be wrong, that would be against the national interest. I don't give a divot about the register and the way that man was talking about there, all day and every day I get you to bring me the fertiliser but I'm not worried about the register at all at this point in time because there's nobody worried about it, seems to be worrying about the farmer, so continue anyway, sorry to interrupt you. No, no, it's just it's an odd level playing field, if some people can bring in fertiliser from the north and other people have to, their purchases have to go on the register, so we would encourage that Northern Ireland would have a register as well, that would be our position. Alright, well look, again I said Chairman, this is one of the most serious issues that we'll discuss here this year, and this CBAM charge that's being put on, and you see the man that's there with the tractors and the FCA contractors, he has a new tractor and there's AdBlue, he shouldn't be charged carbon tax on his diesel, because he's doing everything possible not to create emissions, and as well as that the farmers that are spreading fertiliser and growing grass, grass sequesters carbon, and they're totally alien, they're hurting farmers double and triple by this CBAM and the carbon tax and all the different things that contractors and farmers have to undergo to produce and to try to, at the same time to stay afloat, they're making it impossible for us and making it harder, and I do not, in a way, I'm glad that the youngsters are getting afraid to take on what their fathers and mothers have been doing, because they have been regarded, and they have been regarded for years, and maybe now when they'll see that young fellas are inclined to take over and to follow on, maybe they'll come on then, because it's time that they did.