Planes trump cows, says court

It felt like TB was going to be the big “hot-button” topic of the general election for farmers. In recent weeks, the gap between the Government’s approach and farmer sentiment has been exposed. But I think two separate events, one that happened on Monday, the second while Ireland slept on Tuesday night, mean TB won’t be the dominant issue at all. It will be climate.

On Monday, the High Court lifted the cap on passengers at Dublin Airport on the grounds that “irreparable permanent harm” would be done to airlines like Aer Lingus and Ryanair if the rules applied next year.

Farmers affected by the sudden change to the derogation must feel fairly aggrieved. The argument that a decision announced in July and coming into effect the following January, in the same breeding season, would cause irreparable harm to dairy farmers was given a little tea and sympathy, but nothing changed.

It must seem to them that air travel is a higher priority than food production. And the fact that this was a decision by a court rather than Government won’t stop farmer frustration being directed at our politicians.

Then we woke on Wednesday morning to discover that climate denier Donald Trump is back in the White House (full admission, some of us sat through the entire night’s election coverage).

If he follows through on his promise to repeat his action on being first elected to the US presidency in 2016, and pulls the US out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, those same Irish politicians are going to face questions from many farmers, and other sectors of society.

The debate won’t be whether climate change is real (which it is, of course), but whether Ireland’s Climate Action Plan is realistic.

The question will be whether there’s any point in making a huge cut in Ireland’s carbon footprint, at significant pain, in a world where the US is driving their bus in the opposite direction.

China, Russia and India are all ruled by autocrats, who are more like Donald Trump than any European leader. Simon Harris, Micheál Martin, Mary Lou McDonald and Roderic O’Gorman will all need a coherent answer to that conundrum.

It’s unlikely that the upcoming election will see an Irish right-wing party sceptical on climate emerge as the main party of Government, as has happened in Italy, Austria and unbelievably, the Netherlands. But the Irish Farmers Journal survey this week shows that Independent Ireland is now clearly the third most popular party among farmers.

That is a warning to any Government complacency that Ireland is not immune to the political forces at play across the planet.