Mr. John Muldowney:

Teagasc, through its MAC curve, has identified a number of abatement options that would potentially yield 1.1 million tonnes of CO2 savings from agriculture. The question for us is achieving that abatement potential from agriculture. That is critical and we will try to avail of our advisory service through Teagasc and private planners to ensure better uptake by farmers of these technologies.

In terms of raising awareness among farmers, Bord Bia, through its carbon navigator and quality assurance scheme has more than 40,000 beef farmers involved and it is linking this back to make the farmer believe this is important for the green credentials of the produce he is selling. We are working from every angle to encourage the adoption of the navigator by farmers.

Teagasc has done a great deal of research to come up with this abatement. The Department is heavily engaged in providing research funding to both Teagasc and universities to increase our understanding of the mitigation potential available in agriculture. One of the larger projects we have engaged in is the greenhouse gas network, which is trying to look at carbon and nitrous oxide pools in soil to better understand what is happening there, with a view to try to account for the carbon sinks in the permanent grassland, which extends over 3.6 million hectares. This is part of the long-term view and, hopefully, that will help to feed into the recent decision at European level on Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry, LULUCF, accounting and a mechanism for that.

We visited Bonn as the beginning of June and were heavily engaged from the agriculture point of view in trying to prepare for where the accounting system and discussions on agriculture can potentially go. We were lucky enough to get a decision on agriculture at the scientific body in the international negotiations in the second week of June. We are pleased with that. That will look at adaptation in agriculture and adaptation co-benefits and that will include mitigation. It is again about trying to look at a long-term goal. All parties subject to the UNFCCC are asked to submit ideas on where they think adaptation in agriculture and adaptation co-benefits could go. We will be interested in looking at that.

One of the issues that delayed progress on agriculture at the international level is many countries are concerned that agriculture will be relegated to a mitigation option and food security is not something they want to sacrifice just for mitigation. Some of the larger countries have under-nourished populations and if Ireland reduced food production because it would achieve the goal for us, it would be detrimental to the populations in these less developed countries. They are worried about that and that is why the focus is on adaptation and the importance of agriculture in the communities of these countries. There is an important social dimension to that. We are working on every aspect.