Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

To be clear, Moneypoint will simply be closing and ceasing to burn coal before 2025. I think this is the Government's position too. All the advice being received by the Government is that even if we had lots of biomass, it would not make sense to burn it in Moneypoint. Apart from all the issues that have just been raised by Mr. Stanley-Smith, it would be a bad use of biomass. We would be better off using biomass for combined heat and power in situ in places that use a lot of heat, rather than burning it for electricity in the peat stations or in Moneypoint. The development of the grid, of the existing gas-fired power stations and of renewables means we will not need Moneypoint. We could close Moneypoint well before 2025 without compromising our security of supply or our grid stability. There is a simply a transition out of coal but not into biomass. The advice 20 years ago was to switch to gas, but I do not think that advice makes sense now. We have built other gas stations in the meantime.

I would like to add to what Mr. Stanley-Smith has said on agriculture. Any sovereign state can make a democratic decision on how to balance its emissions. This State has already made a decision. Perhaps it was not subject to that much debate. A democratically elected Government decided to give agriculture a much easier target than the rest of the economy. The target reduction for the rest of the economy is 80%. If we look at the maths of the carbon neutrality target that has been set for the agriculture sector, we can see that by using the agricultural forestry techniques that have been discussed here and by looking at the Teagasc research, we can get between 4 million tonnes and 9 million tonnes of offset from our forests each year. It might be pushing it to get 9 million tonnes, but we can achieve something between 4 million tonnes and 9 million tonnes. If that is achieved and all of it is credited to agriculture, it will mean that agriculture will only have a 50% reduction target between now and 2050, compared to reduction targets of between 80% and 95% across the rest of the economy. This sovereign State has made a democratic decision. Obviously, we are still talking about a reduction requirement. It is up to the Government and the farming sector to determine how that can be achieved. We can shift the emissions around between sectors, but we cannot change the overall envelope. That is where we do not have wriggle room if we want a liveable climate.