Ireland remains almost entirely dependent on imported fertilisers, with no meaningful domestic production capacity for nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium fertilisers, the Minister for Agriculture has admitted in a reply to a parliamentary question relating to spikes inn fertiliser cost and its impact on farming.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Minister stated that, \u201cwith the exception of lime, Ireland does not have any domestic production of fertiliser\u201d and confirmed that the \u201cprocessing of fertiliser in Ireland relates to the blending of imported fertilisers\u201d.<\/p>\n
He was replying to Offaly TD Carol Nolan, who hit out at the closure of the peat sector which had provided fertiliser.<\/p>\n
\u201cA policy of neglect has led to our indigenous industries being subjected to death by a thousand cuts. The cumulative impact is now clear. Total dependence on imports across a range of areas where we should have thriving industries, not least a thriving peat sector,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
According to the Central Statistics Office, imports of mineral fertilisers rose 22% to 1.7 million tonnes in the calendar year 2025, while lime sales were a mere 0.9 million tonnes during the same period, down 9% when compared with 2024.<\/p>\n
The response from the Minister comes as fertiliser prices have risen sharply again in recent weeks due to ongoing international tensions in the Middle East and a significant increase in natural gas prices.<\/p>\n
It also comes on foot of the publication by the European Commission of its emergency Fertiliser Action Plan, with the aim of supporting farmers facing rising fertiliser costs and scarcity, reinforcing domestic production and reducing Europe\u2019s dependency on imports.<\/p>\n
Nitrogen fertiliser prices across the EU are now running around 70% above the 2024 average as of April 2026.<\/p>\n
Deputy Nolan described the situation as exposing a serious strategic weakness in Irish agriculture. \u201cThis confirms what many in the sector have been warning about for years, that we have virtually zero domestic production and are left completely exposed every time there is international disruption,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Minister\u2019s reply also confirmed that his Department continues to engage with Irish fertiliser importers to monitor the situation and is awaiting the publication of the EU Commission\u2019s Fertiliser Action Plan.<\/p>\n
The lack of domestic manufacturing capacity has been a recurring concern for farm organisations, particularly following previous price spikes in 2022 and the more recent surge in early 2026.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA), issued a statement saying it was \u201cpainfully obvious\u201d that the European Commission does not understand the scale of the problem facing farmers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland remains almost entirely dependent on imported fertilisers, with no meaningful domestic production capacity for nitrogen, phosphorus, or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[160172,61,60,43,200370],"class_list":["post-463240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-fertiliser","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-no-domestic-production"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}