Professor John FitzGerald:

Given the focus of this committee, I decided not to focus in my presentation on agriculture. In our annual review report, to be published next month, we are including a chapter concentrating on agriculture. Teagasc has put forward a range of measures in this area. It is our view that we could increase farm incomes and the security of those incomes if farmers producing cattle moved to using the land in other ways. The beef price in the EU currently is some 30% above the non-EU price. Beef farmers are highly vulnerable to what happens with Brexit. The numbers are already falling and a reduction in cattle numbers would be part of that. We will go into those issues in detail in our report next month.

On energy security, I do not agree, as I said to Deputy Doherty, that there is a security argument for pumping more oil offshore. There may be such an argument in the case of gas, but I would want to examine that because I am not sure we can segment the two.