Emission cuts will continue, says Coveney

“I think that farms that are more sustainable and more efficient can also be more profitable, but it won’t happen by itself,” Mr Coveney said.

Speaking at the Fine Gael special conference on agriculture and rural development that took place in Tullamore, Mr Coveney said he is confident that agriculture is “well on the way” to achieving emissions reductions, but that the work must continue “even through crises like the war in Ukraine, or Covid, or Brexit, should that become another crisis again linked to the protocol issues over the months ahead”.

“There’ll be new challenges we have to face every year. Sometimes they’ll be dramatic, sometimes they won’t be,” Mr Coveney said.

“And there’ll be new opportunities we have to take every year as well.

“Never underestimate farming to be able to take advantage of those opportunities when they come.”

He told the crowd that what makes farming in Ireland “so progressive and so successful” is “that we do have extraordinary talent on our farms, we have young people coming through, and we need to keep that evolution going”.

He said that too many people “point a finger” at agriculture “as the problem” when it comes to emissions management, “without actually talking about the progress we’re making - but we do need to do more”.

“This has got to be a partnership between the Government and farming,” Mr Coveney said.

“This should not be a lecture from anybody towards the food sector and farming sector.”

Meanwhile, Mr Coveney told the conference that “given the brutality” seen, he doesn’t “believe that Russia will be forgiven in the short-term or will be part of a normalised relationship from a trade perspective in the short-term”.

“There’s an expectation that in 2022, we’re going to have very significant price inflation across many things but that price inflation will dramatically come back again next year into a much more reasonable space,” he said. 

“That’s assuming the war is over and that there are new supply chains being managed and opened up to get fertiliser, oil, gas, timber, steel, all the things we need that Ireland imports.

“We’ve also got to have a medium-term strategy [because] if this war continues, and even if the war comes to an end, the sanctions are unlikely to be removed in their entirety and they may not be removed at all.”