Mr. Trevor Donnellan:

In respect of Deputy Murphy's first question about an increase in the herd or the perception that it would grow, it is probably useful to recap where we are. We have about 2.2 million cows in the country, dairy and beef. Each of those typically produces a calf every year. What we imagine happening in the future is that the number of dairy cows will increase, especially given the removal of the EU quota system for milk production in 2015. Beyond that point, we would probably see some contraction in the level of beef activity due to the expansion in dairy. By 2020, we do not expect to see a huge change in the total number of cattle in the country. We expect to see more of a compositional shift rather than a huge expansion. Much of the attention has focused on the 50% expansion in the production of milk and much of that increase can be achieved through each cow producing more milk as well. We imagine that between now and 2020, it is possible to increase the milk yield per dairy cow by 20% so that we immediately provide two fifths of the 50% increase targeted under Food Harvest 2020.

I will deal with the question about fertilisers. Certainly we imagine there will be an increase in fertiliser usage on dairy farms. Our indicative figure is about a 30,000 tonne increase in nitrogen fertiliser usage in the period to 2020. That could be offset by some reduction in fertiliser usage elsewhere in the agriculture sector, perhaps in the beef sector.

We are working on the longer term outlook. I should emphasise that it is quite difficult because one is talking about a very long-term timescale where policy in respect of agriculture is an unknown. We are only beginning to gain clarity on policy for agriculture over the next seven-year period, as the committee is well aware. We must make some fairly heroic assumptions about what agricultural policy would look like beyond that point. I would argue that this is a greater challenge than some of the other more technical aspects of calculating the future level of emissions. This will all become clear in our report which my colleague said will be produced later in the summer.