I am delighted to again have the opportunity to speak on GAEC 2, which was raised in the House earlier. As a reminder, GAEC 2 is a baseline requirement under the CAP regulations for the protection of carbon-rich soils. It is legally required to be put in place for 2025 as part of the conditionality requirements for the basic income support for sustainability, BISS, payment scheme. The proposal my Department has submi…
TDs / Martin Heydon
Martin Heydon
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
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questions asked
Members of the Government answer questions rather than ask them
128,151
words spoken in the chamber
127,978 as a minister, 173 as a TD
404
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
Members of the Government answer parliamentary questions rather than ask them, so this page lists none of theirs.
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Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Contributions to debates 530 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
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| December 2024 | 0 |
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| February 2025 | 7 |
| March 2025 | 8 |
| April 2025 | 38 |
| May 2025 | 41 |
| June 2025 | 2 |
| July 2025 | 28 |
| August 2025 | 0 |
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| June 2026 | 1 |
| July 2026 | 42 |
| August 2026 | 0 |
| September 2026 | 1 |
| October 2026 | 45 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 425 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Kildare South 29 November 2024 to now
- party Fine Gael 29 November 2024 to now
- office Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine 23 January 2025 to now
I cannot do this in a minute. I will start by taking grave exception to the phrase Deputy Conway-Walsh. She stated that what is proposed will "severely disadvantage" farmers in Mayo or anywhere else in the context of GAEC 2. That is not the case. Day-to-day farming and agricultural activity will continue.
On the basic point made by Deputy Connolly, and following on from Deputy Kenny's point about splitting parcels o…
I was not suggesting that.
No wonder farmers are concerned. Deputy Conway-Walsh can only raise those concerns and I can only answer back on numerous occasions in this House, in the media and , at farming organisations' public and private meetings to reassure farmers that this is not a designation. When words like "designation" are used and references to planning are used, as was used earlier, that sets farmers' fear off. The only people who wi…
I thank Deputy Moynihan for raising this really important issue. Our livestock sector faces ever-increasing animal health threats. Diseases such as bluetongue threaten our cattle and sheep. I take the threat of bluetongue virus, BTV, very seriously. My Department carries out post-entry sampling of all ruminant animals and camelids from mainland Europe for BTV regardless of the bluetongue status of the country of orig…
We have enhanced biosecurity measures at our ports for vehicles coming in. Ireland is currently BTV free. An outbreak of BTV in Ireland would have a significant impact on animal welfare, the Irish livestock sector and trade. It is important to state that Bluetongue does not impact human health or food safety. However, the bluetongue virus serotype 3, BTV-3, has spread widely across northern and western Europe in 2024…
On the last point, as I outlined, there is no vaccine for BTV-12 but there is one for BTV-3 and that remains under consideration. On the Deputy's main point, the answer is that we are doing everything we can to try to keep this out. Obviously, we are not importing risk animals from risk areas. There is a risk, at the height of the season in high summer, of midges travelling over themselves from England and that is so…
Deputy Aird and I attended the Irish Grain Growers AGM earlier this year, where we heard at first hand the challenges and opportunities for the tillage sector, which is an integral part of Irish farming and makes a significant contribution to overall agricultural output. The Government recognises the importance of the tillage sector and wants to grow the area under tillage crops in the years ahead.
The report of the…
I will go down to visit the flour mill and Deputy Byrne can get me a couple of boxes of Wexford wine while we are there.
At the Mallow festival, I was presented with Wexford wine and it was very impressive. I am delighted to see that market go from strength to strength.
The programme for Government includes support for the development of knock-on industries from the tillage sector. That value-added factor is important, in addition to the basic fundamental of the sector that Deputy Aird articulated so well.
It is estimated that the ti…
I could not agree more. I have said previously in the House that I see agriculture as a gearbox within which all the different enterprises, including tillage, dairy, beef, sheep and pigs, are interlinked and interdependent. Should one sector of that gearbox stop working, it impacts on everything else. Tillage is a key component of that. The sector has been through a tough time. To be a tillage farmer involves a massi…
When I came into this role ten weeks ago, I looked at the situation with ACRES. It is unacceptable that 2,800 of the farmers who signed up to a contract back in 2023 have still not had their applications processed and that there are problems with the system. In 2024, there were 14,500 farmers who had not had their advance payments issued. That was unacceptable.
I worked with the officials to look at the challenges i…
There is no doubt that, when a new agri-environmental scheme commences at the start of a CAP process, it brings a lot of teething problems. I remember that GLAS in 2015 struggled in that first year. It is a big undertaking. We had a number of different measures coming together at this one time.
Let me be clear. While I am pointing to the momentum I have managed to build in this process in the ten weeks I have been i…
The Deputy is articulating the frustration that is felt by many farmers across the country. The points he raised are not ones I am hearing for the first time. We will have the Presidency of the EU in the second half of 2026, and in my determination as Minister, right at the time of the AGRIFISH Council when the other 26 ministers for agriculture are all looking to agree the new CAP, Ireland will have significant infl…
As I rise to my feet to express confidence in the Ceann Comhairle, I reflect on 106 years of Dáil Eireann, during that time from its first sitting on 21 January 1919, with the revolutionary Irish Republic being formed with some of its Members still in prison, to 9 March 1932 when we had that first changeover of power between two parties, when reportedly some Members of this House carried weapons into the Dáil Chamber…
I am happy to answer this question. This structural change is very much seen by Coillte as bringing the whole area of biodiversity and its importance into the heart of the Coillte organisation and it is not in any way a diminution of the importance of the work that Coillte Nature did previously. It is just a structural change within that organisation, and the key focus and importance of that within the Coillte organi…
In February, yes. It is very much still a focus. I can reassure the Deputy of that.
Stop it.
I acknowledge Deputy Aird's first contribution in the Dáil. It is a great honour and privilege to have him as a colleague here. We first served together on a regional health forum with the HSE back when were we councillors. To be serving with the Deputy here now is a great honour and I look forward to working with him. I do not doubt his passion in representing the people of Laois but also representing those in the a…
I thank the Deputy. The climate action plan has provided a pathway for reducing our land use, land use change and forestry emissions since 2021 and commits to the implementation of reduced management intensity on a portion of Ireland’s drained organic soils. This is a relatively new area of work in Ireland, with much uncertainty and complexity. If we are to reduce emissions from drained peat soils, it is important we…
I reassure Deputy Healy-Rae that the GAEC 2 proposals will not have negative impacts for farmers. These baseline elements were agreed as part of the CAP strategic plan in 2021. Ireland had a derogation in 2022 and 2023 while we put a proposal together. We are the last remaining country in Europe to make a proposal in this space. We would have been in breach since 1 January 2025 if we did not do that this year and I a…
-----and have new drainage in line with existing national planning legislation.
It has nothing to do with that.
I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. To reassure her, the Government cannot be any clearer on our position in relation to the Mercosur proposals. We clearly outlined it in our programme for Government. In two-and-a-half hours of debate here in the Dáil last Thursday, I discussed it at length and put clearly on the record of this House our concerns and our opposition to that in that forum and how we ar…
I congratulate the Leas-Cheann Comhairle on his elevation to his very important role. I look forward to working with him in the Dáil term ahead. I congratulate him and his family on a very prestigious honour.
I welcome this opportunity to speak to the House on the importance of agrifood to the overall Irish economy. In a week in which the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen, has publish…