Tillage Sector: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2025-10-15
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Michael Healy-Rae (IND), Kerry

I concur with the Minister on the seriousness and importance of the situation. I acknowledge the fact that the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and the Ceann Comhairle are allowing this debate to go forward. I thank the Opposition for being here to debate this matter because this is not a case of us or the Department versus anybody else. We are all trying to ensure that we have a vibrant and strong tillage industry in this country. We want its future to be secure and we all want to work together. Like the Minister, Deputy Heydon, I acknowledge the critical role the tillage sector plays within the wider agricultural economy. I am acutely aware of the challenges our tillage farmers are facing. I re-emphasise the importance of the targeted supports outlined by the Minister in helping to strengthen and sustain the sector.
With regard to the Common Agricultural Policy for the period 2028 to 2034, CAP supports are an important part of tillage farm income. It is important that these supports are protected into the future. As the House is aware, the negotiations on the Commission's proposals for the next multi-annual financial framework, which includes the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy for the period 2028 to 2034, have now commenced. The proposals involve significant changes, which we are studying in detail to better understand the impact on Ireland. The shift from the current two-pillar model to a single national and regional partnership plan, NRPP, represents a fundamental change in the governance of the CAP. Ireland's proposed ring-fenced CAP allocation of €8.1 billion represents a reduction of approximately 24% compared with the current allocation of €10.7 billion. While the Commission has indicated that member states may supplement CAP funding from their wider NRPP envelopes, which totals €12.2 billion in Ireland's case, we are seeking further clarity on how this would operate in practice, particularly with regard to governance and the conditionality rules that would apply.
Our priorities for the CAP remain. These are a CAP that is more straightforward for farmers, with an appropriate balance between economic, social and environmental sustainability; flexibility for member states to design schemes that suit national systems; and an adequately funded CAP that continues to underpin farm incomes, food security and rural development.
As Ministers, we will play an active role in negotiating with the Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, the European Parliament's agriculture committee and my fellow EU agriculture Ministers to ensure Irish priorities are reflected in the final agreement. Ireland will play a key role during its Presidency of the Council of the EU, in the second half of 2026, acting as an honest broker in negotiating workable compromises for an ambitious EU budget and a CAP that underpins the competitiveness and economic and social sustainability of Europe's farming and food sectors. I am very glad the Minister, Deputy Heydon, will be to the fore in all the negotiations because he is excellent and will be very capable of taking on this important role at a critical time for the future of farming in Ireland. What is at stake are family farms. We will have to rely on the political representation we have at the time in question. The work in this regard has started and will continue.
As Minister of State for forestry, farm safety and horticulture, with responsibility for the national strategy for horticulture, I can fully appreciate the value of maintaining momentum in implementing the recommendations of the Food Vision tillage report. These actions are essential to securing the long-term sustainability of the sector. A key part of that sustainability is ensuring we continue to focus on competitiveness and efficiency to drive a more resilient tillage industry.
I am aware that concerns have been raised by Irish farmers about unfair competition from feed imports produced using GM crops and plant-protection products that are no longer authorised in the EU. This is an important issue and one that deserves our full attention. I am also aware that EU farmers, including those represented by Irish farming organisations, have expressed concern about the rapid withdrawal of chemical plant-protection products from the EU market and the slow pace in approving replacement methods for plant protection. While some of the ideas proposed for farming practice are all well and good, we ultimately need workable solutions. We all want to protect the environment, but we must also protect our food and our crops. To do that, we need access to proper, safe and effective chemicals.
The European Commission indicated in Vision for Agriculture and Food, published on 19 February 2025, that it will carefully consider any further non-approvals of plant-protection product active substances where no alternatives are available. To give farmers more alternatives to chemical pesticides, it intends to make a proposal in the fourth quarter of 2025 to accelerate access for biopesticides to the EU market. A Commission proposal for an omnibus simplification regulation on food and feed safety is also expected in the fourth quarter of 2025. The Commission has indicated that this regulation will include proposals to accelerate access to the EU market for biocontrolled substances and products - biopesticides - and to simplify and clarify the regulatory requirements on plant-protection and biocidal products. I am fully supportive of any proposal that includes practical and meaningful measures within the regulatory framework to ensure the approval process is as efficient as possible.
The Vision for Agriculture and Food communication paper also includes an intention to pursue, in line with international rules, a stronger alignment of production standards applied to imported products regarding pesticides. To progress this aim, the Commission will launch an impact assessment later this year to consider international implications and potential impacts on the EU position. If appropriate, it will propose amendments to the current regulatory framework. Our Department will work closely with the Commission and other member states on any proposed changes to the framework for setting maximum residue limits for imported products.
While the cultivation of GMOs in the EU remains very restricted, there are emerging technologies that will allow Irish tillage farmers to gain efficiencies in crop performance, which would be very welcome. The use of new genomic techniques, commonly known as NGTs or gene-editing techniques, represents a significant development of the past two decades. The potential for NGTs to deliver crops with improved traits in a faster way than conventional breeding offers clear benefits for Irish tillage farmers, consumers and the environment. The Commission adopted a proposed regulation on NGTs in July 2023, and I am supportive of it. Our Department continues to engage at EU level to reach agreement on it.
With regard to the Food Vision tillage group, Food Vision 2030 outlines the importance of the tillage sector and includes an ambition to increase the area under tillage crops. Growing the tillage area is also highlighted in the climate action plan, which sets a target to increase the tillage area to 400,000 ha by 2030. The only way this will meaningfully or really happen is by all of us working together and doing everything we can to support people.
Tillage farming in Ireland, given our unpredictable weather, demands a great deal of resilience. We all have to be understanding of the financial and indeed mental pressures that tillage farmers sometimes face. We have all seen that some of our summers and autumns are unbearably wet. Even where land is better than where I come from, farmers get an awful doing from wet weather. It really takes resilience and the frame of mind ingrained in our tillage farmers through simple, hard work and putting up with tough conditions and times. Everybody appreciates that work, and that is why I keep saying that politicians, the Department and those in opposition have to be so understanding of these terribly hard-working people. When the weather and markets are good, they can make a few euro, but when things turn against them, when they lose and when the weather and market are wrong, they take an awful hammering.
Tillage represents one of the most unpredictable and at times unreliable forms of farming. All sectors are volatile and susceptible to market forces but fattening cattle, by comparison with tillage, can sometimes be straightforward enough. In dairy, various problems arise but ultimately it is sometimes easier to read your plan for the next 12 months. Tillage can go very wrong or it can go right, and that is why we are having this debate tonight. I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for allowing it. I am not making little of other debates but Members will know what I mean when I say this debate is terribly important. It allows us to recognise the tillage sector and the fact that we are all stakeholders in it in one form or another. I am thankful for the opportunity to speak.

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Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:13+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-15