Debate contribution: On-farm Investment

Debate contribution by Mr Declan McAleer on 17 June 2024.

MLA

Mr Declan McAleer

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

17 June 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

On-farm Investment

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4496295

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. Sinn Féin responded to DAERA's consultations on the ammonia strategy and the future operational protocol. We support logical, practical and well-thought-out policies and, where necessary, legislation that will support farmers to reduce ammonia emissions. However, in our submission to the consultation on the future operational protocol, we highlighted fundamental issues with some of the proposals. While we support the goal of addressing the impacts of air pollution on the natural environment, we have a number of concerns around some proposed methods of evaluating and reducing ammonia emissions in a future operational protocol. We are concerned that a one-size-fits-all approach to ammonia reduction on farms would not be fair, effective or sustainable. Farms here vary in size, stock and type of land, and any evaluation of their emissions and sequestrations must consider that. Farmers have raised concerns about the part of the operational protocol about in-combination assessments of emissions. Indeed, I raised that issue at the AERA Committee last week. It appears that, by adopting an in-combination approach, farmers who may have invested in reducing their emissions and taken steps to do that may still not get planning permission, perhaps because neighbouring farms still have high emissions. That is particularly unfair, and previous Members to speak also touched on it. There are situations where, perhaps, a proposed new development is treated as additional to, as opposed to a replacement for, something that may have had high emissions. It is important to note that virtually the whole of the North will be impacted — it is only 5% or less that will not be — by the 7·5 km limit. We believe that the proposed approach could fail to achieve some of its intended outcomes in reducing ammonia, as farmers are deterred from upgrading or replacing old buildings. One of the Minister's top priorities is the natural environment. It is clear that a reduction of ammonia is possible if financial investment exists. We in the Committee had an interesting fact-finding visit to the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) at Greenmount last week. We saw and heard for ourselves what can be done if investment exists. We saw, for example, the covering of slurry tanks, the low-emission slurry spreading equipment (LESSE), such as dribble bars, and the flooring operation in a dairy farm that separates the cattle's urine from their faeces, thereby preventing or significantly reducing the production of ammonia. We saw how equipment can make a big change, but farmers need support to do that. We also learned about the case of Ballynahone bog, where sphagnum and biodiversity have improved, and we were told during the meeting that one of the biggest contributing factors was the fact that a farmer whose land was adjacent to the bog had adopted the LESSE. That shows that when farmers are supported and get the right equipment, they can do it.

Not all the measures in the draft strategy, however, are practical. Going back to the point about equipment, down in my part of the world, where there are mostly hill farms, a lot of equipment, such as dribble bars and other types of equipment, is not necessarily suitable for that terrain. We need to look at all the different land types and types of farm across the North. The threshold should be consistent across the island, given the transboundary location of a number of affected sites. A lot of our bogs and protected areas straddle the border, and they are key to achieving a reduction in emissions across the island. The agri-food strategy in the South offers a number of possibilities for increased cooperation on an all-island basis, and that should be considered by the Department. In order to ensure that we can effectively, fairly and sustainably reduce ammonia emissions, any future proposals must be subject to a rural impact assessment that looks at the social and economic impacts of such measures on rural communities and identifies the proposals that work and those that do not. We support the motion.

677 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:42 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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