RURAL AREAS WILL BE HARD HIT BY EU DIRECTIVE SAYS HARKIN   The neglect with which successive Governments treated the EU Nitrates Directive had resulted in excessive measures being imposed on farmers which threatened their viability at a time when CAP reform was reducing their earning power from the land. It Is no exaggeration to say that pig and poultry farming will be shut down if the current maximum rates of fertiliser as proposed by Teagasc are implemented.

This was stated by Independent MEP Marian Harkin when she strongly criticised the statement by Minister for the Environment Mr. Dick Roche that the Nitrates Directive would promote and support sustainable agricultural development.

“The admission by the Minister for the Environment on Saturday last, that the Irish government had handled the Nitrates Directive badly requires an exceptional effort now to secure derogations which will allow commercial farming to continue to be possible in the future”, Marian Harkin said.  In every respect the Government and, in particular, the Ministers for Agriculture, Environment and, Rural Affairs had failed to have regard for the Government’s rural proofing policy which existed to ensure that no Government or EU policy, threatened the economic and social viability of rural areas, she said.

“The cavalier way in which the Nitrates Directive was handled has ensured that the Government has built up very few brownie points at EU level and I fully understand the anger of farmers who could have reasonably expected that with prices under CAP reform reducing their direct incomes, they would not also have had unnecessary restrictions placed on their volume of production”, Marian Harkin said.  Rural areas benefited to the extent of €2.5 billion from the inputs and services purchased by farmers while 75% of Irish grain was consumed by the pig and poultry sectors which would be shut down if the proposed nitrate and phosphorous measures were implemented, she said.

It was time for the Irish government to acknowledge their deficiencies in regard to the Nitrates Directive and immediately seek the goodwill of the EU in deferring the implementation of the unnecessarily punitive fertiliser thresholds which would be particularly harmful to rural areas which were not being treated fairly in the implementation of the current National Development Plan, Independent MEP Marian Harkin said.