Roscommon-Galway TD Claire Kerrane has called on the Government to support a Sinn Féin amendment to ensure that farmers’ concerns are addressed as part of the Nature Restoration Law.
Concerns have been raised by farmers about the potential impact of the Nature Restoration Law, which was the focus of a Motion in the Dáil yesterday.
Speaking on the Motion, Deputy Kerrane challenged the Government’s amendment, which called for ‘the development of a Nature Restoration Regulation, which both protects nature and ensures the future vitality and viability of Irish farming and rural communities’.
Deputy Kerrane said that the amendment provided no proposals on how to achieve this.
“We know that many in the farming community are concerned about what is being proposed regarding the Nature Restoration Law,” said the Sinn Féin TD.
She said the Motion presented the opportunity to discuss what will be the single greatest change to land use in Ireland.
“The issue however, remains, what will this law actually look like and that is where the Government view is absent, as reflected in their amendment to this morning’s Motion.
“The Government’s amendment speaks of supporting the development of a Nature Restoration Regulation that protects nature and the viability of farming and rural communities, yet conveniently side-steps how they intend to achieve that and fails to present any proposals on how they will support the farming community.”
Deputy Kerrane said that the Government and their European colleagues have not been proactive on developing the Nature Restoration Law and seem to be oblivious to the need to make sure our family farms and rural communities are at the heart of this issue as part of the process.
“The initial text on this law, which will be voted on next week, was never going to be acceptable. It ignored land ownership in seeking mandatory re-wetting and it tried to insist on Farmers doing more without putting actual adequate funding in place – this was simply unworkable.”
