Independent TD for Laois Offaly Carol Nolan has slammed a number of the recommendations contained within the Citizens’ Assembly Report on Biodiversity Loss.
Deputy Nolan was speaking as farmer representative bodies reacted with serious alarm to several of the proposals which if accepted would create additional financial costs for the agri-sector:
“It is clear from even a cursory reading of this report that attempts are being made to consolidate and normalise an essentially elitist form of environmental extremism,” said Deputy Nolan.
“The Report is also just plain bogus with a number of its presuppositions barely reflecting rural reality at all. Farmers are already moving heaven and earth to be environmentally compliant and in the vast majority of cases they are actually doing more to nurture and nourish the soil and the land than all of the eco-NGO’s combined.”
“Yet what does this Report recommend? More financial support for eco NGO’s but also more levies and fines for farmers and agri-exports. It would be laughable if it were not so dangerously absurd.”
“Indeed, I have rarely read a report more in thrall to the idea of over-regulation.”
“This report reads like a wish list of punitive recommendations dressed up in the fuzzy and childish language of those who haven’t a clue about what it takes to keep a financially stable agriculture sector going.”
“God help rural Ireland and Irish agriculture if this Report is ever reflected in law, or if its recommendations becomes legally binding,” concluded Deputy Nolan.
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