Mr. James Cogan:

First and foremost, we should just be looking at solving the problem before we look at the implications around it. Simply speaking, we should not use biofuels with palm oil in them. That is worse than the fuel we are trying to replace. That should be our guiding principle.

On the administrative aspects of this and its impacts, Ireland is an outlier in Europe at the moment. We use more used cooking oil biodiesel per capitathan any other country in Europe. We import 97% of it. Given that we take it from the European pool of used cooking oil, the same pool into which everybody else dips, it is contaminated by palm oil to the same extent as all the other used cooking oil we have. Approximately one third of it is palm oil. That amounts to about a litre of palm oil per fill every time somebody puts diesel in their car. That was a problem caused by Brussels and its poor regulation. It created a directive and gave special privileges to used cooking oil. It was a niche thing but as we needed to encourage the sector, this would be fantastic. Several countries, including Ireland, instead of making it a niche thing, made it the mainstay of their climate policy on transport. We are addicted to it. If we took it out of our system right now, the low results we have would drop down to the floor. We are going to be forced to use less or report less. Within that 1.7% cap, however, one third of it will still be palm oil or possibly even more. The more we restrict it, cost is still the only factor in it. While cost is the only factor, palm oil is still the cheapest. We will use less but a bigger proportion of it will be the bad stuff.