Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Pippa Hackett has said that she is prepared to “hammer on doors” for nature restoration funding now that the law is in place.
The minister said that it “enables” her as a Green Party leader to approach people, such as the nominee for the position of EU Commissioner, Michael McGrath, along with the new EU commissioners in the agricultural and environmental areas for more funding for Irish farmers.
Agriland spoke to Minister Hackett as she runs for the position of leader of the Green Party, which is also contested by Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth of Ireland, Roderic O’Gorman.
Minister O’Gorman was also offered the opportunity for an ‘On the Record’ interview with Agriland in the run-up to the Green Party election of a new leader but was unavailable.
Minister Hackett said that she is there to “listen” to farmers and that a “top down approach doesn’t work”.
“There is a sense that we [the Green Party] like to tell people how to live their lives and certainly that’s not the sense I want to bring to the party.
“I think we have to work with people, understand their own challenges, their own concerns, and meet people on the ground and come up with the solutions collectively together,” Minister Hackett said.
She added that after announcing her candidacy, a farmer’s message to her “summed up” why she is running ‘Ireland needs a Green Party, but the Green Party needs rural Ireland’.
Water quality
Minister Hackett said that “farmers want to do the right thing” for nature restoration and to improve water quality, which she said could be supported by EU funding.
The minister gave an example of her recent visit to Teagasc Moorepark, where riparian margin planting is in use to protect the river on the farm, which acts as a mitigation measure.
She said that farmers have seen support this year in the area of water quality, following the roll-out of the €60 million water quality project, with the aim of supporting up to 15,000 farmers nationally.
“It will be interesting to see how that rolls out over the next five or six years and the impacts of that,” the minister said.
However, she added that water quality is “not just a farming issue”, but an “issue for everyone”.
“We certainly can’t point all the fingers at farmers, absolutely not. We need state agencies, local authorities to play ball too.
“We see farmers working really well collectively, we see it first hand in different areas across the country and then maybe some spillage or a chemical spill from the likes of Uisce Éireann wipes out the fish in that catchment,” Minister Hackett said.
Hackett
“I agree wholeheartedly in what the Greens are trying to achieve, I think they do want to improve people’s lives across communities, across the whole of Ireland,” she continued.
“But we need to bring rural communities with us and we need to bring farmers with us on that journey,” Minister Hackett said.
The junior minister said that there has been good examples of Green-Party-driven policies in agriculture, such as the multi-species swards measure.
The minister mentioned the increase in organic farmers from 1,600 in 2020 to 5,000 currently, which she said is “well on the way” to desired targets.
The target under the Climate Action Plan is for 10% of agricultural land in Ireland to be farmed organically by 2030.
Hustings for the role of Green Party leader have now been completed and voting will commence from Thursday, July 4 to Sunday, July 7.
The new party leader will then be announced on Monday, July 8.