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

Chairman, apologies, the transport committee meeting next door is also discussing carbon and I am shooting backwards and forwards. I will watch a replay of the full presentation and I read Mr. Donnellan's slides with real interest.

Our job is to help the State in this major herculean task of meeting its climate change ambitions. The more we can come up with concept block ideas on which we can get agreement, the more we can help the State. I recognise the good work that Teagasc has done in agriculture, for example Dr. Rogier Schulte's study in 2012, which recognises that environmental care and farming community interests are going to go hand in hand into the future and that profits will increase the more we look after the environment. Should we take that concept to the national scale and think that we need a national land-use plan that thinks in detail in the next 20 to 40 years as to what type of farming we do and where we should do it, what type of forestry and where we should do that, how do we protect biodiversity, how do we restore wetlands and, to revert to research by UCC on grass to gas, how much do we need and how that affect the land-use plans? Has Teagasc a land-use plan in mind? Is work being done on a land-use plan? Would that be a useful contribution and a really strong detailed one to the task we have ahead of us?