Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy should look at what is in the NORA report. We cannot do this in isolation at present and as she will see from the figures, the vast bulk of what we import is from within the European Union. The question is from where it is sourced before that, that is, whether it is indigenous production of EU countries or comes from somewhere else. As the Deputy will see from the detail it provides, NORA provides as much information as it can but is not in a position to answer that. It probably would be useful to have NORA appear before the committee and to ask it whether there are deficits in this reporting mechanism it could clarify in the next report it will present to me. If there still is a void in information, I would be happy to work with this at European level and push it up the agenda because I seek the same result as the Deputy in this regard. I already have discussed this with biomass providers to make sure that something like this cannot happen. It is far broader than the biofuels issue. While the issue of biofuels is to the fore at present, biomass will become a far greater issue in the future. Let us get this right both at Irish level and across Europe because Europe can enforce such provisions on international imports into the Union.