As sure as night follows day is the absolute certainty that Green polices, always pushed through by the conviction of the zealots who have been insisting since I was a child that the End is Nigh, are going to cost you, and cost you plenty.
Anyone shopping for the Sunday dinner at the weekend, and looking to bring home some delicious Irish beef, might have balked at the prices. The Irish Times’ Pricewatch saying that a kilogramme of sirloin steak that cost €10.66 in 2022 had rocketed to €22.56 last week. What caused that doubling in price? The basic law of supply and demand comes into it – but not without the enormous market distortion that is being driven by the Green agenda which seems to exist to tax or terrify us out of existence.
It’s not just carbon taxes and environmental levies, or the the huge subsidies through which governments channel your money either: the idea that humans are bad for the planet, and the desire of successive Irish governments to show those actually in charge – the European Union – that we are the best Greens in the class, has led to a swathe of policy implementation that is often both nonsensical and costly. Now we are seeing the effect of same not just in the cost of our bills but in our shopping baskets.
Since the cost of energy drives the price of pretty much everything, the failure, thus far, of renewable energy to deliver as it was promised to, leaves Ireland particularly vulnerable. Although that PSO levy on your already exorbitant electricity bill is used to invest in solar and wind (whether you think that’s a good idea or not), we’re still heavily reliant on energy imports and paying through the nose for same.
That heavy reliance means our energy security is shaky – and our haste to end peat extraction is an example of just how foolish and short-sighted our governments have been. Almost 80% of our energy needs in 2024 were met through imports – and that energy was mostly derived from fossil fuels. Twenty years ago peat was involved in more than 40% of Ireland’s energy production, but its use was to be phased out by 2030. We rushed to stop peat harvesting ahead of schedule, and then began importing briquettes and peat for horticulture from other countries, a practise Michael Fitzmaurice TD described as “bringing sand to the Arabs”. Last year, the CSO reported that Ireland had imported 172,000 tons of peat since 2016, including nearly 20,000 tons in 2023.
Peat, in common with other fuels, was never going to last forever anyway, but we stopped harvesting one of our limited natural resources while the Chinese continued to burn massive amounts of coal and Britain is turning back to nuclear power.
How does this effect the price of your steak? The aforementioned PriceWatch spoke to Oliver Browne, a lecturer in the UCC economics department, who pointed out the obvious, apart from the current tariff upheaval and uncertainty caused by war:
He notes that the Irish herd has been reduced significantly so the country can meet its climate change targets, which has put pressure on dairy and beef prices at home.
“Often the price of the food that is exported stays the same and, to make things balance, the price has to give somewhere and that tends to be here. We tend to try and keep our image up abroad for the sake of trades as opposed to keeping prices sustainable here.”
The reduction in the Irish herd was demanded in order to meet targets set by the EU and embraced wholeheartedly by governments who seem to have no understanding of the importance of food security or Irish farming’s role in the global food market and the value of same. It’s another example of how we pay through the nose every time a green policy is implemented – even though, by the way, the Green party in Ireland won just 7% of the vote in 2020 before being almost wiped out in 2024.
The taxpayer, of course, is actually a primary funder of the cost of the herd reduction, since farmers, already under the EU’s cosh in relation to so many restrictions and regulations rightly need to be compensated for being forced to reduce their herd, and the cost is running to hundreds of millions – even as we then also face rising prices for meat and dairy.
The national herd is now set to hit the lowest level in 10 years, with the Farmers’ Journal reporting a rapid fall in herd numbers and 288,022 fewer cattle on Irish farms in the space of just 12 months.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary – who is also a beef farmer – recently told Agriland that he believes the significant rise in beef prices “was an inevitable consequence of a lot of the Green measures of recent years”.
“You’ve seen herd reductions in Ireland, in the UK and across Europe. The inevitable by-product of some of these kind of idiotic decisions was, there’s a scarcity value, you’re going to drive up the cost of beef,” he said.
Dairy is being hit in the same way. The government’s green plans seek to remove almost 200,000 dairy cows in just three years as part of the herd reductions plans. Get used to paying €5.50 for a pound of better then. And the dairy herd reduction is being sought despite the industry warning that reaching the 10pc target would end up costing the rural economy €1.3bn per year.
What is enormously frustrating in all of this is that, just as with energy, Ireland is insisting on herd reduction measures based on climate targets, while also signing the country up to an agreement the EU has made which will allow the European market to be flooded with cheaper food commodities from South America and from countries that are ignoring calls to reduce their herds – racking up air miles all the while. That simply makes no sense.
“Mercosur will crush Irish beef farming. It will flood our markets with sub-par products and it will wipe out domestic growth potential for quality Irish beef,” Independent TD Carol Nolan previously said. It seems that Irish farming, already under constant pressure despite the fact that we rely on food producers more than any other profession, are to be hit from every quarter. The lack of foresight from our policymakers is astonishing.
Remember then, when you go shopping this week and wonder if you can actually afford to buy the Irish beef and dairy that your family enjoys, that some of the cost-of-living pain you are experiencing is directly because this government and those that went before it actively adopted illogical green measures that would make this outcome inevitable. If we don’t reverse course, that pain is about to get a lot worse.