Mr. Trevor Donnellan:

Let us talk about the history of what has happened up until relatively recent years. The simple answer as to why emissions have increased in recent years is because we have had an increase in activity in the dairy sector and an increase in the use of nitrogen-based fertilisers, which are also an emission source. Historically, one of the things we achieved was a very significant reduction in the amount of nitrogen-based fertiliser that is used. That is forgotten to some degree, but over the period of ten or 15 years, we reduced the amount of nitrogen fertiliser we used in agriculture in Ireland by between 25% to 30%. That was one of the contributors to the stabilisation in greenhouse gas emission reductions and even a reduction in some years in the level of greenhouse gas emissions that were achieved historically.

On the question of what Teagasc is doing in terms of communication, it is too much from my perspective. During the summer when we launched the report, I travelled around the country in the height of the heatwave, with a broken air conditioning system in my car, presenting this report in a range of different forms. We had a very large stakeholder event which was organised by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in Kilkenny with probably about 200 people at it, some of whom are in the Gallery today, where we discussed in detail what was in the report. We also had briefings for smaller fora, including the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and other interested stakeholders from different sections of the agrifood sector. We have done a great deal in terms of communications.

The use of sugar beet for ethanol production was raised. Different groups have expressed some interest in doing that in recent years. I think it would depend on the yield. It would depend on where the sugar beet plant was located as well as where the sugar beet was grown because one would want to economise on transportation costs. It depends ultimately on the level of oil prices. If oil prices were very high, the price of ethanol would be high and that would make for a product that is probably more likely to be profitable. It depends on sets of circumstances, only some of which we have control over.

I was asked to contextualise the report in terms of what is happening internationally in terms of transparency. From our work, the agriculture sector nationally is very transparent on where emissions could get to in the future and the potential solutions that will address these emissions. While agriculture gets unfavourable mention in commentary about climate change, there is a very high level of understanding on greenhouse gas emissions. I guess that greenhouse gas emissions are of interest in other countries. A key point is that agricultural emissions as a share of total emissions in other EU member states in general is much lower. The average in terms of greenhouse gas emissions produced by agriculture in other EU member states is only about 10%, whereas in Ireland, as members are aware, it is 33%.

That results in a different level of political emphasis on reducing agricultural emissions in Ireland by comparison with those in many other countries. Obviously, in countries such as New Zealand agricultural emissions also comprise a very high share of the total. Countries concerned about addressing agricultural emissions will be engaged in this type of MAC analysis. It requires a good scientific understanding and capacity which not every country has. The reality is that for our type of agriculture which is bovine based, we are in the premier league in terms of emissions efficiency. At the same time, bovine agriculture generates more emissions than other forms of agriculture. This is related to a point I made previously. It would not be very sensible to try to engineer a situation where every country in the world had the same type of agricultural output. There are natural reasons Ireland in largely involved in bovine agriculture. They include climate and topography. Ireland is never going to be like the Paris basin where the tillage sector is dominant. In Ireland we just do not have the type of land, climate or farm size to switch dramatically to other types of agriculture. Therefore, we will continue to have a bovine-based agriculture sector. Therefore, it is inevitable in some sense that agricultural emissions will comprise a higher share of total emissions than in other European countries.