Professor John Sweeney:

Food security is a real issue for Ireland because we are a net food importer, not a net food exporter. We import more food calories than we export. When Ban Ki-moon came to Dublin a few years ago, he made a very important statement in which he said that it is not enough to be a champion against hunger, but that one must be a champion of climate change. The two are inseparably linked.

As far as Ireland is concerned, we certainly produce and export food. Some 74% of our exports, however, go to developed countries. We do not supply food to the developing world on any great scale and I do not believe there is any intention in the future to do so. Irish Aid, however, as part of its programme has a policy of trying to encourage breastfeeding in underdeveloped parts of Africa and trying to discourage the use of powdered milk, for example. At the same time, we export to and try to encourage the use of powdered milk in the Chinese market on a large scale. We certainly have to face dichotomies in this regard.

As to our incomes, the Teagasc farm income figures indicate that one third of dairy farmers earned more than €100,000 last year, which is quite a substantial increase on previous years. There is certainly scope for some farmers to share a little more of that income with some of the poorer farmers, about whom we talked earlier, in the west and in the beef sector, for example.

The other aspect of methane is quite important because methane has been recognised increasingly over the past three IPCC assessment reports as having a more important and significant effect on warming than hitherto recognised. For example, although methane lasts in the atmosphere for a decade or so, if one is continually putting it into the atmosphere year upon year, one is keeping that effect going. In the fourth assessment report, methane over a century-long period was considered to have 25 times as important a radiative effect as CO2 .or in other words, a tonne of methane would be responsible for 25 times as much warming as a tonne of CO2 over that century scale. In the fifth assessment report, however, this figure was increased to 33 times. Our emissions inventory from the EPA, for example, recognises this. A tonne of methane is 33 times more potent than a tonne of CO2 over a century scale. As has been correctly pointed out, because it does not typically last in the atmosphere for a century, it is not really appropriate to consider it over a century scale. If we take the 20-year spectrum or horizon, one tonne of methane is 85 times more potent than one tonne of CO2. That is a measure of how important this gas is, in terms of its impact on warming.

As for the national herd, we have seen that methane per cow has increased considerably since 1990. The more we feed cattle, the more intensive the production system, the more methane they produce. Although we may have the same cattle numbers even as 1990, prior to BSE and so on, we still have considerably more methane emissions to cope with today. It is not a gas that we can by any means dismiss. It is a gas where the move scientifically is towards looking upon it as a more important gas in the shorter timescale, and increasing the radiative effectiveness that it has. There is no way that we can eliminate it.

Our negotiators in Europe - maybe not our negotiators but a very strong agricultural lobby in Europe - got methane completely eliminated from the national emissions ceiling directive revision. To my mind this was very poor and I would love to know what was the logic. It is not counted, for example, as part of our national emissions ceiling. It is solely counted now as part of our greenhouse gas emissions. It is a gas that we certainly cannot ignore. As regards the 11-year cycle, if we stopped we would have no methane in the atmosphere after 11 years. Are we really going to stop emitting methane? If we are not and if we are increasing our herd, year upon year, we are increasing that contribution as time goes on and making its radiative effect even more substantial.