Dr. John Curtis:

Far be it from the ESRI to recommend what farmers should do. The Senator has said that in some areas there are not many other opportunities. That is true when we look only so far into the future. Earlier, I stated that according to Teagasc, suckler herds are not very profitable at present.

In a sense, therefore, it would perhaps be better for suckler farmers financially to look to diversify but, as Professor Barrett has said, for a farmer, farming is almost a vocation, so I can see clearly why this continues. There is a huge body of research on the production of biogas for the future, much of it coming from colleagues in UCC with whom we work as part of the MaREI Centre for Marine and Renewable Energy. We are not there yet - we are reliant in the electricity sector on natural gas - but there is a huge amount of research on moving that natural gas in 20 years' time, or whatever the timeframe is. People connected to the gas grid will be burning biogas. Where will it come from? It will come from anaerobic digestion of waste and so on but also, potentially, fuel stocks. There is a huge amount of research that states that grasslands may be a potential fuel source, and who better to know about growing grass than farmers themselves?

There are opportunities, but perhaps it takes a nudge to move people to find them. Furthermore, perhaps farmers individually cannot take that first step; infrastructure and so on must be put in place too.