The agri-food sector, climate actions and the “green transition” were high on the agenda at the 2024 National Economic Dialogue (NED) today (Monday, May 27) in Dublin.
The NED is an annual economic forum for public consultation and discussion on the next Budget and gives representatives from various sectors including farming the opportunity to highlight key issues directly to government.
Hosted by the Taoiseach, Minister Eamon Ryan and the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform the event today also examined Ireland’s current fiscal and economic landscape.
Taoiseach Simon Harris told the audience at the NED that the Irish economy and the public finances are in good health.
The overall event was divided into a number of themes, covering different sectors, one of which was “Managing unexpected events in the Agri-Food Sector”.
Each theme came with its own ‘breakout session’, each of which was chaired by a government minister. Each breakout session also featured a rapporteur to report back to the main NED session.
For the session on agriculture, the chair was Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon, and the rapporteur was Prof. Michael Wallace, Professor of Agriculture and Food Economics at University College Dublin (UCD).
This meeting discussed how to manage shocks, income viability and risk in the agriculture sector.
It also discussed the role of different actors and factors in achieving this, including the primary producer; the food processing sector; non-farm income; the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP); and broader public policy measures, including the social welfare system.
The panel also examined how to better manage the trade-offs between specialisation and diversification, and how to strike a balance between shorter-term income certainty and longer-term innovation, productivity and efficiency improvements.
National Economic Dialogue
Agriculture also came up for discussion at another one of the breakout sessions at the National Economic Dialogue, namely the session on ‘Climate Actions and the Green Transition: Helping to Build a Resilient Irish Economy’.
This session was chaired by Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan and included some stakeholders from the agriculture sector.
Conor Mulvihill, the director of Dairy Industry Ireland (DII), who attended that session, said the exchange with Minister Ryan was “constructive”.
“[The] minister acknowledged that the Irish agri-sector has made ‘phenomenal’ progress and pointed to fertiliser reduction figures. He strongly spoke out against the ‘finger pointing’ at agri [and] the ‘blaming of farmers’ in the wider debate,” Mulvihill said.
Speaking at the NED, Minister Ryan said today: “If I was to pick out one thing we need to do, we need to pay our farmers better. We need to give farmers an income for protecting nature.”
He used the opportunity to again call for the adoption of the stalled Nature Restoration Law, which has been in limbo for two months.
“One of the main benefits of the Nature Restoration Law is we can pay farmers. We can get an income stream to pay landowners, foresters and farmers, and I think that’s the gap. Farmers do not have a good income out of the current system.
“The current farming system does not serve the vast majority of Irish farmers. We need to start looking at that as an area we can raise money to make sure that they lead the transition we need to make,” the minister added.
IFA
But the president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), Francie Gorman, said he made it clear at the NED, held in Dublin Castle, that the government needs to “to address the cost of doing business in Ireland for farmers and others”.
Gorman said he welcomed the opportunity to engage today with the Taoiseach and ministers directly and “drive home the message that farmers have had enough of costly regulations and being asked to do more and more for less and less”.
The IFA president added: “The reality is that we now have people raising concerns about increasing food prices.
“However, this is inevitable when costs and regulations on the farmers producing the food continue to rise while supports are being cut.
“Either the government will need to pay farmers for sustainability costs or the consumer will have to pay more. Farmers cannot carry the cost.”