Mr. Thomas Ryan:

Senator Daly asked what farmers are thinking. The farmers I meet are very engaged. Some 200,000 carbon assessments have been done on farms, which means someone must be doing them. There is at least one done per farm household if we think about 135,000 farm households. Some 50,000 farmers are involved in GLAS. The IFA president, Mr. Joe Healy, has said we need to get that reopened because there is a pent-up demand to participate.

Every farmer who gets a basic payment and is part of CAP has to complete an inspection and to comply with 20 key measures, 13 of which are called SRMs and a further seven good agricultural environmental conditions. Any farmer who does not is subject to a penalty. Some 24,000 farmers in the beef data genomics programme, BDGP, are genotyping their stock in order to try to reduce their emissions by 10%.

We can also consider what farmers are doing voluntarily. In conjunction with the EPA we run a voluntary scheme, called Smart Farming, which is oversubscribed. We are heading into 2019 with more farmers interested in participating than the capacity of the scheme.

That is because it focuses on the win-win that Deputy Ryan referred to earlier of improving farm returns while also enhancing the environment by focusing on climate. The committee's report earlier this year stated that it should look at expansion. That is before renewables are considered. This is the great value of the Teagasc abatement climate roadmap in trying to pull all this together. All the ideas for generating, whether about renewables or efficiency, seem to be included in the 27 measures. To give direction and guidance to the sector, IFA president Joe Healy has written directly to the Taoiseach, stating that we should look at what delivery of the climate roadmap looks like. For the first time ever, we have some sort of vision regarding what 9 million tonnes of emission reductions from the sector could look like. The farmers I meet are very engaged. They have to be because their future depends on getting sustainability right.