Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As Vice Chairman of the Joint Committee on Climate Action I have an interest in today's discussion. I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to allow me contribute. I published a paper on biogas almost two years ago in which we examined what was happening in other countries. The driver behind that was the need for climate action, but what was also in mind was our very large agricultural sector. We are an agricultural country, which is fine, but we have a serious issue with agricultural waste. We are not long back from the EU having pleaded for another derogation on slurry spreading because we are churning it out by the megaton. That is having other environmental consequences in terms of rivers, water quality and so on.

Professor FitzGerald might deal with this question. We have only one plant in the State that injects biogas into the grid. As far as I know it started doing that recently. It was just about to do it the last time I visited the plant, which is more than a year ago. That is pumping into the town of Athy. The injection point is where the Cush Inn used to be, in Kildangan. On the one hand we have this serious problem with agricultural waste. We have a substantial beef industry which produces a very large amount of waste. We have a substantial hospitality industry which produces a very large amount of food waste. If one stands in the plant in Nurney and looks at what is going in, it is all that type of waste. There are many odours in the area also because there is a pig farm adjoining it but there are not many odours around the plant. There are more than 6,000 of those plants in Germany. We are not Germany but we are a big agricultural producer for a country of our size.

My party, Sinn Féin, published a paper, Powering Ireland 2030, last year. We tried to get the media to take some interest in it but I am afraid we were unsuccessful. Something more important was happening on the day. In that paper we stated that 10% of our energy needs could come from biogas. Mr. Brady referred to 20%, which may be possible over a longer term.

We also have the problem with farm incomes. In northern Italy, farmers have a milk or a beef income but they also have an income from slurry because they are joined together in co-operatives and the slurry is being dried. Rather than having huge tank loads of wet slurry going out and destroying land and land drainage pipes in the middle of winter, and anybody who knows anything about farming will know about that, they simply spread dry fertiliser.

They use the anaerobic digestion process in the plant to dry the slurry and pellet it, and it is then sold. They are selling gas and fertiliser and they continue to sell their beef, dairy or whatever.

We have a major problem with farm incomes. If we did not subsidise them, most farmers would go out of business. They cannot survive without the single farm payment and the other range of subsidies.