Mr. Mike Quinn:

I had a meeting with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Coveney, approximately four or five weeks ago and we engaged in a very detailed discussion regarding anaerobic digestion. As the Chairman is aware, there are no anaerobic digesters in the country at present. Actually, that is not correct because there is one small digester in operation at Shanagolden in Limerick. We were asked to examine the suitability of Bord na Móna land for anaerobic digestion, which we have done. When one considers the position of Ireland versus, for example, Germany, where large-scale anaerobic digestion is used to produce biogas, it is obvious that the biggest problem we face arises in the context of the tariff. We currently have the lowest tariff for anaerobic digestion in Europe. The two challenges we face relate to the fact that we cannot make the use of digesters commercially viable and our ability to secure feedstock. We have prepared a submission on the matter which we are going to send to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in the next week or so. We are of the view that there is scope for three regional anaerobic digesters of significant scale that would process somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 tonnes of waste per annum in order to generate biogas but the provision of meaningful tariff support would be required to facilitate this.