Senator Tim Lombard’s successful amendment to the Climate Bill should not be underestimated. This amendment allows for the accounting of carbon removals by farmers.

At the moment all that is being counted is what is emitted while what is removed is ignored. The unfairness and injustice of it sticks out a mile. Yet the Dáil, overwhelmingly, had no problem with it.

This amendment is not about the climate. It’s about fairness, it’s about property rights, it’s about justice. If we accept the principle that those who emit carbon should pay then logic and justice would suggest those who sequester should at the very least be allowed to put it against their own carbon footprint.

Tim Lombard has described this amendment as a “game changer”. And so it is — as long as it is implemented immediately. There are already rumblings: “Once it’s measured it should not be accredited to the farmer”, “Difficult to implement”, “Is the science accurate enough?”, “Is there sufficient data?” and so on.

When it came to estimating what we emitted (and that is all it is, an estimate) they had no difficulties — but when it comes to estimating what we remove they will have all kinds of difficulties.

Current science suggests that: an acre of forestry removes three tonnes of carbon a year; an acre of grass removes 1.5 tonnes; a kilometre of hedgerow removes 1.5 tonnes. If 80pc of these figures were to be allowed against a farm’s current Bord Bia carbon footprint it would be an “on account” acknowledgement. The figures would then evolve as the science evolves. Then we can all, jointly and co-operatively, address the big issue of our time: global warming.

If something like this isn’t done then the palpable anger in Rural Ireland will worsen. Anger at being scapegoated, at being demonised, at a brazen attempt to rob us of our carbon rights.

Old emotions are being reawakened. Is this a new Land War? We, the farmers of Ireland, have skin in the game. Our livelihoods are at stake.

My own family had their lands confiscated during the Cromwellian confiscations. We helped defend Limerick during three long sieges. We travelled to Wexford to fight in 1798. We sheltered Thomas Francis Meagher when he was on the run in this locality in 1848. We were a safe house in the War of Independence.

We became tenant farmers on some confiscated land, paid rent for 250 years, then bought it out under the Land Acts over the next 100 years. As I said, “we have skin in the game”.

Treat us fairly and we can go forward together. With the current animosity towards us we are going nowhere.

John Hourigan,
Murroe, Co Limerick