Irish farming is sustainable but it can do more, Leo Varadkar says

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said Irish farming is sustainable compared with other countries, but it could do better.

The new president of the Irish Farmers’ Association, Francie Gorman, nodded in agreement with the Fine Gael leader as he made the comments at the organisation’s AGM in Dublin on Tuesday.

There have been tensions between farmers and ministers over environmental measures, including the reduction in an EU-imposed limit on how much organic nitrates Irish farmers can use per hectare.

The reduction is being made in response to poor water quality in Ireland.

Mr Gorman said farmers had felt “abandoned” and “very frustrated” in recent months and expressed concern about how moves to reduce emissions and protect the environment would impact their business.

Asked if he was happy to see farmers go out of business so Ireland can meet its climate targets, Mr Varadkar said “no, of course not”.

“I think, relative to farming in a lot of other countries, in a lot of other parts of the world, our farming is sustainable, but can it be made more sustainable? Yes it can.

“And that’s the kind of thing that we need to work together on to improve our water quality needs, because we want to protect the nitrates derogation in the long term to improve biodiversity and also to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

“I want to acknowledge in that context that greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture went down in 2022. We don’t have the numbers yet for 2023 but we think they went down again.”

The National Climate Action Plan sets a target of a 25% reduction in agri-sector emissions by 2030.

“So in fairness to farmers, they are playing their part,” Mr Varadkar said.

“If emissions continue to fall every year as they have been for the past two, I think farmers will be able to reach that 25% target and we might be looking a bit more closely at transport and buildings and energy in some of the areas that maybe haven’t been as successful in reducing their emissions.”