Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

This is not a rural-urban divide issue. Irish farmers are already suffering from climate change. We saw it this summer. If we have a long, cold winter, agriculture will be in deep trouble. Urban or rural, we all realise that. We must help our farming community.

Mr. St. Ledger set out a new model for a close-to-nature forestry. He does not have to answer now, but is there any paper he could share with us that sets out how much that would cost, where it would be done and, as Professor FitzGerald asked earlier, how we could get farmers to switch into it? What would be the incentives and mechanisms to deliver it? I agree with the different vision of forestry that he set out, but is there a good paper on this matter to which he could refer us? Where could we look to see the real nuts and bolts - I am sorry for using the wrong metaphor, as I should have said "branches and twigs" - of how that would be delivered?