Dr. Jonathan Derham:

We are pleased to have been invited before the committee to discuss the issues of greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and smart farming.

I will, as the Chairman mentioned, by my colleague, Mr. Phillip O'Brien, who is a research fellow in climate change issues.

By way of introduction, we circulated our EPA strategy to members. They can see from this that there are three main elements to what the EPA does and that these relate to regulation, knowledge and advocacy. What we are presenting today relates to two of those, namely, knowledge and advocacy, in the context of measuring, preparing inventories on greenhouse gas emissions, examining Ireland's performance, carrying out research and developing knowledge. In the context of advocacy, we are focusing on smart farming. This is a concept to which I will refer later. Our vision is for a clean, healthy and well-protected environment supporting a sustainable society and economy. We are of the view that this is not an unreasonable ambition.

This meeting is extremely useful coming, as it does, hot on the heels of the recently-published fifth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, particularly that part produced by working group II, which has responsibility for assessing impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. The report in question reinforces our role in the area of knowledge, research and advocacy.