Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 20 September 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Third Report of the Citizens' Assembly: Engagement with Ms Marie Donnelly

2:00 pm

Photo of Tom NevilleTom Neville (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have spoken at length to one organisation that is based in my area on the topic of renewable biogas and an anaerobic digestion. We have had many meetings on it. We have been trying to get farmers to buy in to this. There was toing and froing. I may not be using the correct technical terms, so please correct me if I get them wrong. There had to be a collective of 300 or 400 farmers to feed into the system and there were issues around contamination, so there had to be some fail-safe mechanism to ensure there was no cross-contamination within farms as a result of the gas. That was an area that was being worked on at the time. I have spoken to the organisation about that and we have been working on it. We have been communicating with the upper echelons in Leinster House about it as well.

I do not have the technical knowledge to be the facilitator of that. However, this is an issue that is being discussed more and more, but as Ms Donnelly states, it is a transition and it is managing that transition.

Ms Donnelly referred to speaking to County Limerick farmers. They cannot be told to change to this system overnight. It is a case of trying to educate and manage the transition and get them to buy into it. A kickback buy-in will negate against any investment that will go into it, because farmers are under a lot of pressure at present.

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