Ireland South MEP Grace O’Sullivan has insisted that while environmental policies do target “large agribusinesses” pushing farmers to ramp up production, they do not target farmers themselves.

Speaking in Brussels, the Green MEP heaped criticism on those in the agri-food supply chain, who she said focus on lowering prices at the expense of farmer incomes and environmental standards.

O’Sullivan claimed that current CAP policies allow the “lion’s share” of funding to go to the largest farmers in the EU who are already the most profitable. A balancing of farm payments is a key Green Party pledge to voters.

“I want to be on a collision course with the large agribusinesses, with the large corporations that are hoodwinking and are causing the problem of pushing the whole area of production at any cost,” she stated.

“We know, and farmers know, that they are the worst off in the whole supply chain. It is really the companies which have been pushing them towards importing fertilisers, inputs to land.”

The MEP argued that the Green Party has been the firmest opponent of an EU-Mercosur free trade agreement in the European Parliament.

She singled out the Green position on opposing the import of South American agri-food goods as “an area we work very well together with farmers”.

“We have been successful. For five years, we have fought it off and every time the Commission tried to push it out again, we have managed to push it back and we will continue to do it and continue to do it with the farmers,” O’Sullivan said.

Her comments come as she is pushing Taoiseach Simon Harris and members of Government to “leverage power” on EU colleagues into getting the Nature Restoration Law back on to the agenda of EU member states.

The proposals have been in limbo since March, despite having the go-ahead from the European Parliament, when what had been anticipated as a rubber stamping of the legislation by member states faced opposition and has been withdrawn from the agenda since.