Luke Ming Flanagan confronts fertiliser industry on profits
Luke Ming Flanagan, MEP, challenged representatives from the fertiliser industry over windfall profits and the true costs of decarbonisation. He pressed for answers on whether industry gains are being returned to farmers and asked for country-by-country data on organic fertiliser potential.
Industry incentives and farmers
Luke Ming Flanagan criticised industry witnesses for prioritising profit over farmer welfare, asking pointedly whether windfall profits should be redirected to the farming community. He challenged the assumption that industry concern equates to farm-level benefit.
Decarbonisation versus inaction
Flanagan pushed the panel to quantify the cost of not decarbonising, arguing that the long-term harms of inaction must be weighed alongside transition costs. He warned that current dependencies leave food security vulnerable to political shocks.
Organic fertiliser potential
The MEP requested a country-by-country breakdown for the graph presented on organic fertilisers, asking specifically what level of fertiliser autonomy a high-livestock country like Ireland could achieve using manure and organic alternatives.
Implications for farmers and policy
His interventions framed the debate around accountability, cost transparency and realistic pathways for Irish agriculture. The exchange highlights tensions between industry priorities, decarbonisation policy and the practical needs of farmers.
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Thank you very much. I'd like to think that everyone who comes in here and everyone who's elected to this place has the interest of farmers at heart, but with the greatest respect to the speaker from the fertiliser industry, and it is your job, your job is what is best for you, not for farmers. What's the best way for you to make profits, etc. So I think that should be, you should shout that out loud because the more money you make, the more successful you are. That doesn't necessarily mean farmers are going to do well out of it, and it'd be good to get an answer on windfall profits, and do you think this money should actually, given that you're supposedly so concerned about farmers, shouldn't this money be going back to farmers? And I hear this cost of decarbonisation, and it sounds massive, and I'm sure it will be massive, but have any of you got any figures on the cost of not going down the road of decarbonisation? Because we're actually there in the place we are now because we have made ourselves dependent on, let's call a spade a spade here, we have made ourselves dependent on feeding our children on lunatics. Basically we're dependent on people like Donald Trump, we're dependent on a war in the Middle East not occurring, like it's like hoping it won't rain in Ireland, that there won't be war, they're the way things are. So from the point of view of decarbonisation, what is the cost, the long-term cost of not actually doing that? And in relation to one particular graph that you put up about how far we could go with organic fertilisers, I'm just wondering is there a breakdown on a country-by-country basis on that? Let's say for example Ireland, the amount of, we produce a phenomenal amount of animal manure, a country that has the level of beef production and dairy production like Ireland, what sort of a level of autonomy could we get to with fertiliser production? But to me, yes it would be expensive and massively expensive to decarbonise, but let's get real here, we need to look at the cost of not decarbonising and we know the cost of that will all end up dead. you
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