The Nature Restoration Law – The ‘End Of The Tether’?

The vote of the European Parliament on February 27 in favour of the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) is the culmination of a long process that was temporarily halted last June when – to the delight of farmers across the EU – the European Parliament’s Environment Committee denied the proposed Nature Restoration Law the majority it required to proceed to a vote in the Parliament. At the time, all the usual suspects cropped up on all their usual media pulpits to denounce that decision as a practically incomprehensible act of environmental vandalism.  It was nothing of the sort. It was a last ‘touch on the brakes’ by politicians worried by the lack of any workable balance between the individual rights of property owners and the diktat of the State and, by extension, the Commission. But that’s all it was – a touch on the brakes – and the supporters of the NRL just redoubled their efforts to get it passed, which it was on Tuesday February 27. 

What’s worth noting is the sentiments expressed by Junior Minister of State, Malcolm Noonan, in the Irish Independent published the previous day (February 26). In an extensive article dealing with the prospects of the Bill passing, the Junior Minister explained that whatever the result in the European Parliament the next day, the Irish Government was going ahead anyway.

‘He said that even if the law is not passed at EU level, plans will continue in Ireland and work is underway to create a restoration plan for Ireland, with the aim of bringing it into effect by 2026’.

Irish farmers are wearingly familiar with this practice generally known as “Heads I win, Tails you lose”.  We can now expect a law that hands Member States the legal means to order landowners to restore decisive portions of their property to the unproductive state in which decades-old maps had them classified. The law will enable the Irish State to write to a farmer whose parents and grandparents had – through back-breaking physical labour – drained the last few vital acres that made a holding productive enough to support the family, and simply inform him or her that according to map records of 1900 or 1950,or whenever, that these acres had once been ‘woodland’ and that they must be returned to that state forthwith.

That’s a very serious matter, going, as it does, to the very heart of the State’s attitude to individual’s property, as well as the future of the thousands of holdings made unviable at a stroke by the loss of these productive portions and their capacity.

That’s not to say that there aren’t any laughs to be derived from all this. How else could we describe the interventions of those gigantic multinational food corporations in support of the NRL? The idea that these corporations care a jot about disappearing biodiversity is laugh-out-loud stuff and their real attitude can be gauged by their relentless year-on-year decrease in the margins they allow us, the farmers. The coalition in favour of the NRL is thus unlikely but revealing; we see some of the most coldly calculating corporations on the planet teamed-up with assorted extreme environmentalists. They have nothing in common except a determination to end traditional farming – the corporations in the hope of introducing synthetic ‘lap-to-lip’ replacements and the environmentalists out of ideology.

Last summer, and in the wake of the defeat of the NRL at Committee level, Minister Ryan complained of “scaremongering” by opponents (he possibly meant ICMSA) about the likely effects of the NRL. At the time, ICMSA pointed out to the Minister something that bears repeating today and which he would do well to understand: the onus to explain how the proposed law would be put into effect in Ireland was squarely on him and his colleagues. They were, and still are, demonstrably unable to come forward with a coherent account and ICMSA’s lack of confidence in the degree of planning and foresight being demonstrated by supporters of the NRL was evidently shared by An Taoiseach, who was widely reported to have stated that the law went too far. Again, this is worth repeating: it is manifestly not up to ICMSA or any other farmers to cut through the obfuscation and ‘shure it’ll be grand’ vague assurances. We are way past that at this stage. It’s up to Minister Ryan and the those supporting the law to work every conceivable situation through to a satisfactory answer – and to have those answers in advance of anything resembling a State order to ‘restore’ such much as a square yard of farmland.

We must confess that after nearly 75 years of dealing with Irish Governments of every hue that we must insist on more binding commitments than once we did. As ICMSA understands it there is zero budget allocated to the NRL: not a cent. So, we are looking at a situation where the Irish State might be writing to Farmer X in County Anywhere and telling him or her that the State is in possession of maps that show that his or her 10 best acres were once a woodland or marsh or whatever and that he or she is to restore them to that condition by, say, 2030.  Imagine getting one of those letters and imagine if you had previous experience of the Irish State designations of SACs and SPAs – and how that had worked out?

ICMSA has been saying for some years now that farmers were getting to the end of their tether. The Nature Restoration Law is the end of that tether.

Denis Drennan, President, ICMSA