Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I was a member of the Joint Committee on Climate Action. The presentation would have been more appropriate to that committee.

The brief today was the future of the Irish beef sector and while the witness highlighted many of the negatives and mentioned just transition in passing, he has not given us anything that we could incorporate into the report we are compiling as to what could be that just transition. By his own deliverance based on the EAT-Lancet Commission report, if, hypothetically speaking, we were to have a 50% reduction in the meat intake of every human being, based also on his own figures on population growth towards 2050, there will be a need for 50% more than we are producing today. That balances out in terms of the status quo.

The solution to the problem of emissions from the beef sector, which is what the witness has highlighted, is not achievable because even if we reduce by 50% we need to increase that 50% to meet population growth. We are in a status quoposition. Our target has to be carbon neutrality. There was nothing in the presentation on how we can achieve carbon neutrality. In a million years' time, if there are still human beings on this planet, there will be carbon emissions. The solution is sequestration or achieving carbon neutrality and there is nothing forthcoming from the witness's presentation as to where and how we can achieve that. Irrespective of his philosophies, beliefs and passions, there will always be beef production on this planet. As my colleague put to him, An Taisce and Ireland have to tick all their boxes but the beef the people of the rest of the world will eat will be produced in the felled Amazon jungles in Brazil, fed hormones and will travel by steamers across the Atlantic. This is a global issue. Ireland achieving carbon neutrality and the rest of the world not achieving something similar will not change our global warming issues.

It is all well and good to highlight the negatives and say we should close the gate, put a lock on it and that that will solve our problem. It is not a solution. It will not help the sustainability of rural Ireland. I refer to the small family farms that are trying to survive on land that will not grow beans, land that one could not afford to buy shares for if one tried to plough it or on small fields and plots of land that are surrounded by hedgerows. Some 3.9% of the country is surrounded by hedgerows and the witness gives no credit to the sequestration value of those hedgerows. I have a small farm and a suckler herd. If I were to go into growing beans or any other crop, the first thing I would have to do in the morning to make it in any way viable would be to remove all the hedgerows. That is a negative move straightaway. What is the witness's "just transition"? The witness used those two words continuously through his presentation but he did not say what that just transition needs to be for the Irish suckler beef farmer, which is the topic of conversation here today.