Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am cognisant of the time constraints. I have a number of questions on the report. My colleague, Deputy Deering alluded to the cattle numbers. Since we started on this committee, everybody has been trying to predict the future and to say what we should be doing, and we are all trying to look forward, which is nigh on impossible. What can we learn from looking back at what we have done? Based on the cattle figures, it is a fact that the agriculture sector decreased the greenhouse emissions from 1990 to 2016 by 3.5%. In the middle of that period, 1998, cattle figures were in excess of 7.5 million. What did we stop doing? What can we learn from looking back? What were we doing right at that point? Was it due to the production process? Was it the result of farming style, farming habits or a change in farming philosophy, in that there was much more mixed farming at that time and we now seem to have moved away from tillage?

I see from the report that tillage is in the mitigating sector. What are the proposals for tillage going forward? Where would the beet crop come into that? Would beet be grown with a view to biofuel production or whatever? At this stage I get nervous analysing reports because we have to wonder if we are wasting our time because so many of them seem to end up on shelves. At what stage are the Teagasc reports, what is Teagasc working on at present and at what stage are its communications with the Department? Teagasc is the research wing of the Department. What communications has it had since it published its report? It is a fabulous report but what is the Department's position on it at this stage? Has it started to buy in? What is the next level the Department intends taking it to? I assume the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has already looked at the Teagasc report. I wonder about its position on it.

Will Mr. Donnellan give a brief summation of where the report stands in comparison with similar reports that would have been done in other countries? I am coming from the angle of carbon leakage. Mr. Donnellan has made the point that we have to take a global holistic approach. If we tick all the boxes, plant the entire country in forest, we will still not solve the global problem. We will make it worse in cases because the food we produce so efficiently will be produced elsewhere with a far greater carbon footprint. How does the report that Teagasc did on Ireland compare with a report that it would do on South America, eastern Europe or wherever?