I meet Green Party leader Eamon Ryan in his Dáil office the day after the election was called. The Dublin Bay South TD says he was putting up posters until late the night before, with free space on lampposts already at a premium. The cramped room on the lower floor of Leinster House’s modern extension is filled with memorabilia, including a collection of seashells and flags for the Dublin Cycling Campaign and the Extinction Rebellion movement. 

Listen to the full interview above. The topics covered include:

Along with the adjoining offices, this section of Leinster House corridor is home to the three Green TDs elected in 2016 – Catherine Martin and Joe O’Brien, too, hold suburban Dublin seats. My first question to Ryan is about the number of seats he hopes to secure this time on the back of the so-called Green wave observed in last year’s local and European elections – and how many his party would need to enter a coalition government.

Eamon Ryan (ER): I am always cautious, because I’ve seen elections in the past where you think you are going to do well and then, at the last minute, the tide changes. I have been saying that we need to win at least six seats for the possibility of going into Government. I think you need that sort of number. That would be one in twenty Irish people voting for you, so you need a certain amount of political capital. You typically would get two cabinet ministers – you need two cabinet ministers to work effectively in Government for a party like ours. With your senators, you have a parliamentary team that can cover an all government approach.

I hope that we can do better. In the polls, we are slightly higher than 5 per cent at the moment. Historically, with the transfer patterns that we got, we have a chance of going into double figures if the polls are accurate. So that’s what we are going for, that’s sort of our inner goal: to get into double figures, particularly around the country. We are very strong in Dublin but we want to win everywhere really. We are running in all 39 constituencies, we have a very strong team, we are a good organisation and I suppose the green issues, over the last year, have risen.

Thomas Hubert (TH): We have seen that in the local and european elections, is that part of your assessment of what you can do there?

ER: Yes and it is not going to go away. The fact that the European Commission last month launched their Green New Deal policy, which is the centre of the European economic strategy now, the fact that those Australian bush fires are still raging – Irish people have a strong connection with Australia – is in our public consciousness. 

Even in the business world, increasingly people are realising that the investment, the economic opportunities, are going to work best with those who are taking the climate and biodiversity crisis seriously. I think it’s the way the world is going, we have been working on it for 40 years. I suppose it gives us a head start on some of the other parties. Our job is to deliver the practical solutions, which will address that crisis in a way that will improve people’s quality of life. That message, I sense, is relevant today and that’s why we are doing well.

TH:  Who do you see yourself going into coalition with, potentially, between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – are you open to either option?

ER: Our central argument is that we have to address the climate and biodiversity crisis. When you look at the scale of the changes needed, it’s not a small thing. You’re changing the entire energy system, transport system, food system, industrial system, waste system and land use planning system in two decades. It has to involve a range of different constituencies: you have to have the farming community on board, you have to have trade unions engaged in a transition, you have to have the finance and business community. To make this leap – and it’s an unparalleled leap, the scale and speed of the changes that are needed – you address the science. 

If you accept that most of the people in the environmental movement do that, it then brings you to the political conclusion that if this involves everyone and every place matters, why would you go down the route of a politically divisive route trying to achieve it? Saying we will work with you but not with you, or that it is young versus old, or that it is rural versus urban, or that it is left versus right – that won’t work when addressing climate. You can see it for example in Australia, where they allowed it to become a divisive political issue, in America where their ability to act is constrained by the fact this is seen as one of those totemic identity-type issues – that won’t work. 

For that reason, I think our role is to work with all parties, as a party that does have great interest and expertise in this climate and biodiversity crisis.

Ryan draws the line at forming an alliance with a party that would be “anti-democratic, which is not peaceful”. Other than that, he is prepared to enter a coalition with whatever majority the people choose.

I ask him if this would continue the approach undertaken in the all-party Oireachtas committee on climate action, where all parties bar Sinn Féin and Solidarity-People Before Profit agreed on a general climate plan. “I think they only disagreed really on the carbon tax issue,” Ryan says. Instead, he highlights agreement on key targets, such as the generation of 70 per cent of Ireland’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030. “How do we do it,” he points out, is the next question. 

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TH: So, say I am a business owner and the Green party goes into coalition into government after this election. What will change for me, what are the main things that I should expect?

ER: I would hope one of the things that will change is a sense of consistency. You know what the government is going to be about, that they really are going to take the climate and biodiversity crisis seriously. It must be difficult in the business world if you are seeing people saying, “This is the future, we have signed the Paris agreement,” but then don’t actually do anything about it. Or you do the opposite of it in terms of going ahead with the road transport strategy, which is not going to help deliver, or you go ahead with an agriculture policy which is counter to what you just committed to. 

If we were going into government, it is not just us. It would be consistent with European policy, with what the finance world is saying anyway, with the EIB saying they’re not going to invest in fossil fuels anymore. That is one of the first things: if you are working in the business community, you need to be consistent and consistently ambitious in this area. 

“We are probably ahead in areas like integration of renewables on grid, and that is not an insignificant skill that the rest of the world is going to need.”

The second thing is, it creates an opportunity for innovation and for Ireland becoming a leader in the transition. That may sound ironic for a country that is so badly behind in terms of the actual level of emissions, but we have some strengths. First of all, we are a stable, democratic country with an independent judicial system. When the state finally does mean to come around to do this as a strategy, the state is agile enough. 

When I mean the state, I don’t mean the public service or the political system, but the way we can pull together as a country. It’s a small enough country – five million people – which in the past has shown that it can work collectively. We are small enough to be agile in that way, but we are large enough to be proof of concept. The whole world is going to have to do this. We are probably ahead in areas like integration of renewables on grid, and that is not an insignificant skill that the rest of the world is going to need. 

There are other areas, I would say the area of land use, where if we really changed our tack and we went towards an agricultural and farming policy and a land-use policy which is pro-biodiversity and climate action, we would learn skills that would be applicable elsewhere. We would also have a marketing advantage and a real trade advantage. It is the same with most of the areas. 

What we would try and provide in government is a consistent innovative environment where the government, academia, business and civil society need to work together to test solutions and to deliver. It’s not just about testing, it’s learning by doing a skill. If you are in business and you say: “I am part of this network system where I know we can collaborate and we can learn by doing”, I think this is a real opportunity for Irish business and for the Irish economy, particularly when you see that the Danes are doing this too. They’re going for 70 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. They’re saying that they don’t know how they’re going to do it, but they’ll learn by doing, and in doing that they will develop an economic advantage. 

People say: “Why should we do this when the Chinese aren’t doing it?” The Chinese are doing it, they’re ahead already in a range of technologies. Even in America with President Trump, California is doing this. Germany is doing this. So if we want to be one of those technology and new economy centres in the world, we need to be in that cadre of countries leading it, not ones that are just adopting and buying the technology from others.

“You have to maintain that ability for people to say no and to be engaged in the planning system.”

I put it to Ryan that the culture of consensus he describes to learn by doing and experiment with emerging, greener technologies is not reflected in the planning process, where anything new is targeted by objectors, many of whom are close to the Green Party. Even forestry projects, which are seen as a major plank in addressing Ireland’s carbon footprint, are stalled  – landowners and contractors around the country report a general freeze on licenses to plant or fell trees as a result of constant objections. 

One piece of proposed legislation left in limbo by the dissolution of the Dáil is the Housing, planning and development bill, for which Minister Eoghan Murphy published a draft in December. The proposals would restrict the ability to seek a judicial review of a planning decision to people with a “substantial interest” who have exhausted all appeals before An Bord Pleanála. The bill would also strengthen the defence of planning bodies and allocate a higher proportion of legal costs to objectors who lose court cases against planning decisions. In addition, only non-profit environmental NGOs with at least three years of existence and 100 members would be allowed to appeal to An Bord Pleánala or to initiate a judicial review.

Meanwhile, a November review of forestry licencing commissioned by the Department of Agriculture recommends broadening pre-planning consultation before planting trees, but also introducing fees for objections and streamlining the process into a single planning application for all steps in the forestry cycle.

When I raise these issues with Ryan, he brings Brexit into the equation.

ER: Yes, it’s true, our planning development process is very slow. But one of the strengths about being in a country with an independent legal system is to know you have rights, and environmental rights are important too. If the business world thinks: “Our neighbour the UK says, we’re going to go gung-ho on this and will do it by getting rid of environmental regulations and social, labour rights and so on” – I don’t think that’s going to work. Or people might say: “Oh well, the Chinese or other governments will be better at this, because they have command and control and they can just click their fingers” – I’m not so sure that will work in the long run either, because they’ve lost public support from some of the pollution that’s arisen from that lack of proper regulation. 

Eamon Ryan
Eamon Ryan opposes current planning reform proposals: “Environmental rights are important too.” Photo: Thomas Hubert

There’s a balance. You have to maintain that ability for people to say no and to be engaged in the planning system. I think one of the ways you get around it is you do start from the bottom up as well, you go in with real consultation at an early stage. The scale of his transition is so big, I think we need to involve local authorities and local communities. It’s cooperation between civil society, business, academia and government. The civil society involvement is really important. Particularly, a lot of the innovations and development in the technology area will involve use of data and that will not work in my mind if it’s top-down – “You take the products, don’t worry about who owns the data that we’re using it for.” I just don’t know if that’s going to work in the long run. 

I think far better to take your time getting it right, getting solutions that have buy-in at the start from communities, and then the planning system will work a lot quicker. You can apply that to technology, the same would apply to forestry you mentioned. Forestry is a huge important issue in the response to climate change. We have difficulty because the public has a valid concern. We are introducing a form of monoculture plantations that restrict biodiversity, decrease soil fertility in the long run, have consequences for water pollution and so on. Far better for us to switch to a model where there is much more diverse forestry, it’s much more biodiverse-rich, it’s much more long-term. It may be difficult for the business community…

TH: It’s not making money for the owner, instantly or even during their lifetime.

ER: No, but that’s the forestry we need to restore biodiversity, to really store carbon properly and to get public acceptance. We’re not going to blank the country in dense, dark plantation forestry and get the public to buy into it. And I’m sorry, in the end, what’s viable and what’s the right thing to do can’t be just for short-term profit. It does have to be part of a bigger land-use plan and the bigger social, environmental agenda. Business’s agenda has to include those social and environmental issues. So then the question is how do you make it financeable? That’s where the government has to support by regulation and by financing mechanisms, to use the Common Agricultural Policy reform and other mechanisms to make sure for landowners in the short term that it is actually viable. 

That’s a switch away from the current grant-based system, which is very heavily going towards plantation-type systems. That’s going to change and it wouldn’t be honest if we were saying: “Everything will be the same, you don’t have any problem, we’ll push it through planning by weakening planning laws.” I don’t think that the public would accept it, and I don’t know in the long run if it would lead to the right policy.

TH: So you wouldn’t support the continuation of the proposals at the moment to streamline the planning process, make objections more restrictive by introducing fees, would you?

ER: No, there’s real concerns coming from, in particular, environmentalists, academics, lawyers and others who are saying that what risks being done with that draft legislation is actually undermining the cornerstone of what’s good and strong in this country, which is the independent legal system which gives people rights. Our strength comes from our constitution and that real freedom and rigour to protect rights, and I think we should be very slow and wary of restricting them and thinking that’s going to be a silver bullet to get to development happening in double quick time.

“We used all our political capital in Europe to get that lower target, begging effectively not to have to do too much. I think there is widespread agreement now in the political system that this is no longer tenable as a position.”

TH: You mentioned our record on emissions and we are in Ireland going to miss the 2020 targets that were agreed by a previous Green minister, John Gormley. Many people would say that those targets were too ambitious for Ireland because of the makeup of the economy here, that there weren’t so many opportunities to cut emissions from older industries as there were elsewhere in Europe. Is there a risk of the same approach happening again, if the Greens get into power, of setting the bar very high, but not necessarily realising if the potential is there to do it in Ireland?

ER: I don’t think that the 2020 target was set too high. We were on course to meeting it. In 2011, after four years of Green government, we were about 12 per cent below 2005 levels. We were on a path to meeting it. Half of that, the science would say, was due to the economic recession, but the other half was because in our time in government, there was consistent political ambition to make things happen. In the last nine years, that evaporated and we’ve seen the consequences now that we are at zero reduction instead of 20 per cent. From here, then, you could say: “Oh well, you know, because we’re so bad we shouldn’t aim to do more…”

TH: There is this idea that it is discouraging. We can’t meet those targets, so why would you even try? 

ER: Because I think, actually, it would be a better economy for those who do it.  This is a fundamental problem with Fine Gael in the last nine years that they constantly came at it thinking: “Oh no, that’s that’s going to be a burden on the country” – it’s not. Switching is going to give you an opportunity for this country. The longer we delay, the more expensive it will become – and the more punitive the fines and other costs that would be associated with not doing it. 

The reality is Europe has signed, collectively, the Paris climate agreement and we have signed as a country. We originally committed that to play our part in meeting the Paris goals, we would see a 40 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 from 2005 levels. The European Commission is now saying we’re going to have to increase that to 50-55 per cent, because the science is all the more worrying three to four years on. Ireland had been given a target of 30 per cent, so much lower than other countries for 2030. We used all our political capital in Europe to get that lower target, begging effectively not to have to do too much. I think there is widespread agreement now in the political system that this is no longer tenable as a position and we’re going to have to increase. 

The government’s climate action plan was projecting 2 per cent per annum reductions over the next 10 years. The science says we need something like 7 per cent per annum at least – that’s across the board, and you might say a country like Ireland would have more responsibility. It’s that sort of a level, a three- or four-fold increase on the current ambition that we’re not even meeting. That’s the question of this election: how do you do that?

That 7 per cent per annum gives you something like a 50 per cent reduction target by 2030. The last act of this Dáil, pretty much, was the Climate Action Committee meeting we had last week [early January]. We agreed a consultation document into the European process considering these targets. I think there was widespread agreement on the committee. We said, oh yeah, we’ll do 50 per cent, everyone agreed. OK, but how do we do it? This is the question of this election, because how we do it will shape what our transport, waste, industrial, energy, and food system is like. The debate after the election in terms of forming a government is going to be centred a lot around answering those questions. It’s not an easy question to answer. 

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The interview takes place on the day of one of the beef farmers’ protests in Dublin’s city centre. As we sit in Leinster House, a tractorcade is on its way to blockade the surrounding streets for the third time in as many months. The discussion around the Green Party’s core climate change and biodiversity policy inevitably drifts towards the agri-food sector, which accounts for a third of Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions and two thirds of its land use.

TH: If we look at the way it’s been started by the outgoing government and the last budget, it was very much carbon tax, agreeing that for the long run, and then targeting the proceeds of that towards helping the poorer households, the means-tested schemes for insulation, fuel allowances – not so much for business. Actually, there is a hike in electricity tax for business, there are reduced incentives for electric cars for business, there is no renewable electricity scheme for another year, a reduction in the budget allowed for the renewable heat scheme. So is there anything you can offer to make this kind of policy more business-friendly from a financial, hard cash perspective – that the money is not going to just be taken away from business to achieve this transition?

ER: I’d be critical of the budget because, you’re right, it was relatively a very small package – was it €130 million if you add up all? I don’t disagree with some of the prioritisation within that. We have to make this a just transition and therefore the prioritisation on social housing retrofitting is right in my mind. But the same budget had almost a €1.2 billion – or €1.5 billion, depending how you read it – emergency provision for Brexit. If we’d switched the figures, we could have actually made the Brexit response climate-related at the same time.

For example, one of the large amounts of money put in the Brexit budget was going towards the food industry and agriculture, because they’re probably the worst affected. Well rather than giving the money in direct subsidy to companies, what we are saying is give the money to farmers engaging in, let’s say, every farm a hectare of native forestry in its land. It would give you a very large carbon store over time, a biodiversity corridor, and we would give a direct payment of those farmers, often those who will be protesting out here today in great difficulty, and will have a knock-on benefit in terms of local business investment, rural and more advanced development. 

When it comes to a direct role for business in the wider transition, I have a couple of thoughts. First, we’re obsessed to a certain extent with the public capital budget – a billion or so. A lot of it’s very fixed – housing, education, health. Even transport takes time to shift, but you can shift between public transport and roads. What Danny McCoy said at the National Economic Dialogue this year is true: we obsess on the €8 billion that the public sector is spending, and we don’t focus on the €100 billion capital budget that the private sector is spending. I’ll be honest, I don’t think we go to businesses and say: “We’re going to promise you a whole lot of goodies.” Out of our €8 billion package to influence the €100 billion – you’d make a marginal difference, but it’s not a state handout that is going to make this change, particularly when the state budget compared to the private budget is quite small. 

“Any company thinking five or 10-year timeframe is not going to see that financial regulation to be properly audited for carbon as a burden.”

So what would we do? I think there is a real mechanism in the regulatory side. If a large amount of that capital budget, let’s say, is in commercial buildings, why wouldn’t we be looking towards regulatory changes? That’s saying we really are going to push further building efficiency or the use of cross-laminated timber in construction as a way of storing carbon in buildings, really push commercial waste demolition recycling mechanisms – regulatory tools that business may not like because it’s forcing people to do things differently, but it’s a level playing pitch. And it’s very often for the good, in the sense that if you have a very efficient building, you have a much lower running cost over the lifetime of the building, which is not a bad regulation, as difficult as it is sometimes to see regulations changing.

In regulatory changes, as a State, we should be looking at that Task Force on Climate Change-Related Financial Disclosures set up four or five years ago now with Mark Carney and others through the UN process. I do think that changing the auditing requirements for businesses to take into account environmental considerations and other social and corporate governance changes as a state and as a country –  business might say no, don’t let us do that, our neighbours in the UK are going down the low-standards-everything route – well, I don’t think that’s the way to go. 

I think for the business world, far better to be part of this transition, particularly towards a low-carbon future, rather than trying to opt out of it. Because in the end businesses’ customers are going to be demanding this in five and 10 years’ time. Any company thinking five or 10-year timeframe is not going to see that financial regulation to be properly audited for carbon as a burden. Look at the big Irish stock market companies: CRH, Ryanair, Glanbia, Kerry – they’re all at risk. They’re all in businesses that have a high carbon content, particularly food companies. If you adopt those new auditing rules that are coming – the world’s not going to walk away from this and just let it burn – businesses are going to be facing those new financial disclosures.

Businesses are already having meetings the last six months in all the top auditing and business advisory houses here, and they know it’s coming. So far better for a government that says: “We know it is coming, we’re going to work with you to implement Ireland has high standards around auditing.” That will then influence that €100 billion spend in a way that really moves the dial. I think that’s the job of government. It’s to do it in a way where you’re testing, and if it’s not working you kind of adjust and change the way you do the regulations. The business world of the future is going to be in that environment and you’re not doing business a favour here if you think let’s avoid responsibility, let’s go for the low-standard route. I think that’s particularly happening now in the finance community. There’s a real realisation in the finance community that the on-going financing of fossil assets which could be stranded assets is not wise, that the pension funds and other ultimate suppliers of the financing are going to be insisting on auditing of their financing to make sure that it meets low carbon standards. 

The environment community has really learnt lesson: we’re no longer going after the end consumers all the time, we’ve learned from the likes of Bill McKibben and others in 350.org that really, the best political way of addressing this crisis is to tackle the source of the problem. That’s why we focus on divestment from fossil fuels at source. The next step, in terms of the global environmental campaign to make this leap, will be concentrating on the finance industry and what they’re financing. 

In Ireland, we have a choice: which side of that line do you want to be on? Do you want to be on the bad side or the good side? I met the chief executives of all the top banks in the last six months and I see them copping on and saying yes, you know what, we should go green. Look at AIB’s advertising; I don’t think it’s just advertising. I think that has to now translate down into their lending book. Same in Bank of Ireland, same in KBC, same in Ulster, and same in the wider international finance. 

That’s coming. A government that’s ignoring it or pretending that we can delay for five years, is that doing business a favour? I don’t think so. 

30 per cent forestry target

TH: You’ve mentioned earlier in the conversation, several times, biodiversity. What would the Green Party going into government ask of its partner to put in its programme for government on this that would impact business?

ER: We got agreement in our all-party Oireachtas committed that we need a national land-use plan. The government didn’t put it into their Climate Action Plan, so it is going to have to go in and it’s significant because 20 per cent of Irish land is peatland. We need to rewet, block drains and store carbon in that mechanism. And we will stop horticultural use of peat, stop peat for power generation obviously. That’s not insignificant, it’s 11 million tonnes of carbon in a country where we’ve 60 million tonnes of emissions. If we could stop that, it’s not big business in a sense, it’s often diggers out in a bog, but it’s a real skill, it’s a real opportunity, in my mind, for companies like Bord na Móna and others to be good at managing land. 

Same on forestry, the government is saying we’re going to go from 11 per cent forestry cover to 18 per cent. I think actually, with the scale of the climate crisis we’re seeing, that could increase further to 30 per cent. And doing that has significant economic opportunities. That’s a huge development in terms of afforestation in this country, and how we do it and the skills in forestry are going to have to be multiple. We don’t have foresters coming out of our colleges. We need 10 times the number of people coming out from that stream, and it has knock-on consequences in what we’re using the wood material for and how you manage the whole thing. 

Same in farming, we need to switch from this very intensive use of land, which is causing huge problems in water quality and ammonia pollution, in lack of insect life, bird life. The reason we always mentioned the climate and biodiversity crises together is because they’re equally critical and the solutions to one will help in the solutions to others. So moving towards a more biodiverse economy and land use will help store carbon.

For the Irish food industry, which is a significant industry with €10 billion-plus exports and a significant employer, that does mean changing everything. If we’re trading on an Origin Green brand, we have to be genuinely Origin Green, otherwise it’s greenwashing and the international markets will very quickly – all it will take is one Greenpeace campaign to say “Do you know what, Ireland is fake on its Origin Green brand” and that would do huge damage to our reputation and our marketing capability. The current system is one where we’re trading on our Origin Green brand and we’re getting a commodity price. We’re getting the same price as the lowest-quality kind of beef producers, and so on. 

“We should be less reliant on foreign direct investment, we need to build our indigenous industry. We should try and do that on the back of some of our natural resources.”

I’m long enough involved in my business originally and also used to work in UCD business school. I’m old enough to remember the Telesis report back in the late 1980s. The Culliton report in the early 90s, the Enterprise Strategy Group report – those reports always said the same thing in my mind over the years: we should be less reliant on foreign direct investment, we need to build our indigenous industry. We should try and do that on the back of some of our natural resources, is what I read in the Culliton report and Telesis even, going back further. 

Doing this will achieve that objective. Indigenous industry is connected to our land. In a world which will become increasingly unstable because it’s either burning or it’s suffering from droughts, the fact that we have a water supply, the fact that we have a really good growing climate still, the fact that it’s one of the best forestry climates in the world, the fact that we can tie renewable energies to this and innovative bioplastics or using biomass in a very sophisticated way – not just massive anaerobic digesters, which continue an industrial polluting model, but really site-specific, high-efficiency use of biomass material – that’s where the global economy is going. That’s what we can be very good at, and that creates business opportunities. 

Last but not least, business opportunities in tourism because I used to work in tourism, ran a business in it. People come here to have a sense of connection to the land, not just for the welcome of our people. And if we go down this green route, we will still maintain that business. It’s an important part of that not insignificant industry here.

I’m curious about Ryan’s tourism business and I ask him for more details after the interview. The company is Cycling Safaris, a tour operator based in UCD’s bike shop since 1989. It offered tourists a range of tours of Ireland at the time, and has now expanded to cycling holidays all over Europe. “My sister runs it now,” Ryan says. He has retained a 5 per cent stake, company filings show. The company made a €26,730 profit last year and had just under €200,000 in shareholders’ funds.

But back to the Green Party’s plans to transform Ireland’s agri-food industry.

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TH: Are you relating that to consumer education? I was just thinking we’re in the middle of the Veganuary campaign and you’d hear people saying it’s more sustainable to eat soybean or almond products coming from intensive agriculture halfway around the world rather than local produce from Ireland. So there seems to be a lot to do as well, on the consumer side of things, to get the buyer of products locally to understand what’s going on with climate and biodiversity. 

ER: Yes, and I think you’re right. It can’t be greenwashing and people feeling, “Oh, I’m doing the right thing by having such a product”, then suddenly realise – avocado is not good and green, it is bad and brown. This is difficult because it leaves the consumer in a really confused state. And that’s one of the reasons I go back to what I said earlier on about the auditing requirements, particularly for the food industry, so that you’ve got some clear understanding. There are some precedents. The European renewables directive is somewhat corrupted so far, but it has the potential to have that full traceability so that you’re following right back, if it’s palm oil, to the site; and if it’s a site in Borneo, you can show that was formally jungle and now they’ve changed it.

I think one of the changes in the food retail business that we see is going to have to be a stronger connection between the primary producer and the local consumer. The current system works very well for retailers and processors of protein, but it actually leaves the farmer badly paid. We can’t continue with that because we won’t have any young farmers in 10, 20 years’ time. So that fundamentally has to change. And one of the ways to change it is you try and make a connection between the local consumer, the local farmer. 

I’m just thinking of a practical way; we’re going to massively expand school meals, which is a really good development. It would be great to have a connection where the food’s coming from particular farmers in the local area. That provides a very strong sense of connection and a regular income and a direct distribution link that would help overcome the kind of problems in the current system. 

“We made a mistake for a long time by putting all the emphasis on the consumer.”

My personal view is going back to what I was saying the environmental movement has learned in the last 20, 30 years. We made a mistake for a long time by putting all the emphasis on the consumer. This is wrong for two or three reasons. Firstly, the system change is so large, you have to start at source, not just at the end point of consumption. Secondly, it makes people feel guilty and also, you can get it wrong in terms of saying: “That’s the right thing or the wrong thing.” That leaves consumers confused. I’d leave it up to the consumers to a certain extent, but it has to be a better product, it has to be high quality. 

Going back to what I was saying about rewetting bogs, and large areas of blanket bogs in uplands. Actually, if you look at what the best climate thing to do is, according to advisors I talked to, it’s probably grazing with cattle and sheep. If you’re in an uplands rewetted bog, in the summer the water naturally drains lower – you can graze that. In grazing, you actually keep the birch trees and other trees down, which you want to do because otherwise they would drain the land and you’d have an emission of carbon. 

Eamon Ryan
Eamon Ryan: the Irish food industry needs to “change everything”. Photo: Thomas Hubert

You could have a future for that Dexter cow, let’s say, from the side of a hill – that’s a climate hero cow. That’s the low-carbon best solution to that specific area. And you could sell that as a premium because it has a very high quality of life relative to some poor cattle stuck in a lot in China for all its life, but it’s also playing its part in this land use management system. That’s very specific and very local. But that’s where I think we need to go, is that sense of reconnecting to local food, local sense of what’s happening and managing and improving our land to improve water quality, to improve diversity, to store carbon. That’s where the land use plan comes in. Because you know that your farming system is meeting those objectives. 

And the key critical fifth objective is that you have a strong local community, that you have a vibrant, young farming community there. That’s sustainable, that’s viable and that’s not undoable. That is attainable, without being the kind of top-down, “Thou shalt not eat this, thou shalt not eat that”. It’s to create the conditions to promote that sort of structure. 

The way you do it is through the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and that’s to play in the next two years. We’re doing it in the European Union, that is saying the Green Deal is the centre of our strategy. If we were in the Common Agricultural Policy negotiations, we would be going with these ideas and saying, let’s use our Ireland as the best model or test case.

Broadband plan and RTÉ funding

TH: Final question as party spokesperson on communications. There were two issues that were very much in the news and controversial in the past few months. The broadband plan and RTÉ’s funding. First on the broadband plan, it’s signed now, what should happen with it? If you get into government, what would you do with it?

ER: Going back to what I was saying earlier about being in a country with the independent rule of law, consistency where you know if a contract is signed, you honour it – governments don’t throw out contracts. Also, we need broadband across the whole country. I had criticisms of that plan. I don’t like the fact that the state is investing X billion and ends up not owning the asset. The developer puts a tiny fraction of that and gets the asset. I also think there’s certain provisions in it, at the time I recommended that there be variations. We’re predicting another 60,000 one-off houses within the scheme when our national planning framework says the exact opposite. There are loads of flaws in it.

Where you can amend those within the contractual arrangements, you’d seek to do them, but you can’t overturn a contract which is signed. So we need to build it, but critically we need to get the benefit off the back of it, and that’s soft skills stuff around using the technology. I think actually one of the most interesting issues are around, for example, developing internet-of-things applications, home energy management systems, charging of electric vehicles which is connected to a digital network. 

Actually, the really interesting thing now would be to see who owns the data on the networks and who owns the data in the applications that are going to come out of the use of the rural and urban broadband schemes. I think that’s what the state needs to be good at. It’s around the soft policy stuff, about the regulation and ethical use of data and digital systems. We should concentrate on that as well as the physical infrastructure in terms of providing rural broadband.

TH: And your solution to a sustainable funding model for RTÉ?

ER: We did a lot of work this two and a half years ago in the Oireachtas committee on recommendations in that regard, and I still stand by them that it be a household payment for every household. Whether you have a TV or not now, the idea of a TV inspector coming to look in your cupboards when your laptop or your digital camera or your phone is there is kind of crazy. I think it should be collected by the likes of Revenue so that you don’t have that loss of €15 million uncollected, or huge €10 million costs in the collection system. That would be a huge gain. 

“In the immediate future, I think a household charge of €160 really reduces the cost of collection, and look for other additional funding gaps.”

I think there are other measures, the likes of allowing RTÉ require Sky to bid in for retransmission fees – I don’t see why that hasn’t been allowed in the last three years as was recommended by our committee. I think, down the line, this commission idea is not a bad one to look at the bigger picture in terms of how we fund media, not just through a licence fee, but in a world where Google and Facebook are probably getting what must be €400 million a year in advertising and a huge monopoly advantage in there because of their platform, data control and knowledge. We can’t just continue to allow that. 

And not just that, but I suppose there’s a lot of money going to media through that advertising, through the Netflix, Spotify models, still through Sky and through Virgin Media. It’s not as if we’re not spending money on media, but it’s all going to typical large multinationals that are not reinvesting in local media systems. So that needs to change. And I think I would introduce those measures I just mentioned the Oireachtas committee has recommended, but have an eye to a wider, longer-term media strategy. And it is a broader media strategy, it’s not just how could you introduce a tax that get a few bob to throw to the existing system.

TH: I was going to ask you: is it a new levy on foreign media players? 

ER: Let’s look at what a commission comes back with, but it shouldn’t just be trying to maintain the status quo. Media is going to change. It’s not like we want a monolithic RTÉ, circa 1977, when Gay Byrne is at his height. You want a media that’s connected to our needs today. If media like that are holding a mirror back to society, you’re not holding it the same way you did in the 1960s or 1970s. It’s probably several mirrors. 

I do think whatever funding we’re doing, it isn’t just to RTÉ, I think public service broadcasting comes in a variety of different ways. We have a very interesting committee here, the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and Fake News, which is a bit of a mouthful. It’s an international committee, looking at some of the issues around Facebook and other networks, Twitter, Google, YouTube and so on. How they’re affecting political discourse in democracies. 

One of the points was made by Áine Kerr, who was very good at the hearing and separately at another event. We will still need free-to-air public service broadcasting. If you think it’s all just going to go on a subscription model, you have very well educated people who can afford a subscription model who’ll be very well informed and you risk leaving chunks of society out who are dependent on what? You wouldn’t maybe have impartial, independent, high-quality journalism. So we will still need public service broadcasting and media and broadcasting in every sense. It’s all the one now. This election, I’m not watching it on telly. I’m watching it on player as much as I’m sure everyone else is too. But we will still need that. And how you fund that is still a critical issue. 

In the immediate future, I think a household charge of €160 really reduces the cost of collection, and look for other additional funding gaps. You can close the likes of transmission charges, but that’s probably not going to be enough. It probably needs a three- or four-, five-year period of a government for the introduction of further changes just to make sure you have that stable funding model. You need media in a democracy.

TH: Eamon Ryan, thank you.