Cross-Border Co-operation
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-19
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Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

I will quote the Taoiseach who told an international audience at COP30:
The science is undeniable. Temperatures are rising, and the clock is ticking. If we are not prepared to tell our citizens the truth about this, we are failing them, and this planet, in the most profound way.
Has the Taoiseach tried telling the truth to the big dairy farmers and the big dairy processors who are driving up carbon emissions and are polluting our waterways, North and South? I have raised the issue previously in terms of Lough Neagh. Lough Derg is the latest of our lakes to turn neon green, a 41st shade of green that the Taoiseach will not be plámásing world leaders about. The main cause is nutrient pollution from agriculture, accelerated by the nitrates derogation. When will the Taoiseach tell the truth that environmental protection and intensive for-profit animal agriculture are incompatible, that we need to reduce the number of dairy cattle, that we need to compensate farmers with a herd reduction scheme and that the nitrates derogation must go?

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-19