Professor Gerry Boyle:

It is at Mountbellew. We have a long-standing relationship with GMIT. The Senator asked a very good question about climate change on the education curriculum. Last June, we published our education vision blueprint, which is a programme to take us up to 2050. Believe it or not, the green cert is about 30 years old. In educational terms, 30 years is a very short time. The curriculum is constantly improving. At the moment, we do not have autonomy on the design of the curriculum but have to defer to Quality and Qualifications Ireland, the supervisory body. We hope to get autonomy and, when we do, we will be able to respond to changing needs far more quickly. At the moment, sustainability more broadly, including climate change, is part of the curriculum. The Senator is absolutely right that it is going to increase in the future.

The question about the farmer in the food supply chain is a hardy chestnut. Unfortunately, Irish farmers have very little control over prices because of the nature of the market. Their price tapers, effectively. In some niche markets they probably have a little bit more influence but certainly in the broader commodities they do not. They can influence the quality of the product, of course, which makes a massive difference to the price they get. Our approach is to focus on research as a driver of value added, which hopefully will translate into benefits for the farmer and certainly will translate into greater efficiencies on the farm, which will give the farmer a little bit more headroom. The issue that is very evident to me in the food sector, particularly for commodity production, is that quality, food provenance and sustainability of production are becoming requirements for being in the marketplace. It is not that the farmer is going to get a premium for producing his product in this way but that doing so is a requirement. That is becoming very evident.

Deputy Corcoran Kennedy raised the question about the IPCC report. It should be a wake-up call for us all. We have identified measures that, if implemented, would allow us to square the circle between growth in dairy production and the need to adhere to very stringent targets.

Presumably, the punishment for not meeting the targets will be significant fines. I am not sure what will happen in 2020 but even if a small fine has to be paid, the visibility of that would create massive difficulties. A continuation of breaches in our increased emissions will point to an inability or unwillingness on the part of the country to address the challenges. One would always be worried that while the whistle has not blown yet, it may blow in the not-too-distant future if we continue the way we are going, and none of us know how that will work out.

The Chairman asked a difficult question about our role in appeals. As he said, we were involved in a research exercise initially. When the original maps came out, Ireland was going to be a substantial net loser from the way in which they were constructed. If I recall what my colleagues told me at the time, that was for the simple reason that the officials in Europe who put this map together had forgotten that Ireland is a wet country. We rebalanced things at the time and I am more comfortable in us engaging in that high-level role than engaging in an individual case-by-case submission. Any farmer who wants to make an appeal can draw on the research we have, which is publicly available.