Farmers from across County Cork are heading to Dublin in a tractor convoy today to force the government to discuss the effects of new climate change measures on Irish agriculture.
A much larger march had been organised by the Irish Farmers Association in the capital on Sunday, but these plans were changed after Covid figures continued to increase.
Instead tractors will be driven from all over the country and arrive in Dublin on Sunday.
The IFA argue that the environmental targets proposed by the government are unrealistic and pose a risk to the future of farming in Ireland.
Speaking to the Chair of the Cork IFA Dairy Committee, Alan Jagoe, says that food production is different to other energy users, such as data centres:
"The main reason why we're heading to Dublin in a tractor convoy is to highlight the importance of farming to the local economy but also more importantly, because the whole area of climate change and carbon budgets will be discussed and debated next couple of weeks. We want the Government o sit down with IFA and other farm organisations and have this discussion, and come to a solution together, it's really important that we get looked after here properly, because we are producing food. We're not farming data centres, we're not extracting fossil fuels in the ground. We're producing food on our family farms. Right across the country."
