Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have read all of the presentations with interest and apologise for not being here to hear them.

Some of my points may have been discussed already. I will begin by discussing the renewable gas forum. I wish to make the general point that when we declared a climate emergency we also declared a biodiversity emergency and there is an intersection around our climate and ecological targets. I share some of the concerns expressed by Deputy Ryan given that Ireland sponsored the report to the UN on land use, the issue of the transfer of land, for example, to grow fuels versus other things. Ideally, we must consider biofuels as a by-product of ethical farming practices and that is where we want to move to, and remember that Ireland has a lot of waste products and high levels of food waste.

I will focus on ammonia pollution. Ireland was found to be in breach of ammonia emission levels in 2016 and 2017, and there are forecasts that we are in danger of continuing to breach the level. In Ireland, the Nitrates Action Plan has been hugely criticised by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, plus Ireland's rivers have breached the acceptable levels of ammonia and we know that we are in breach. The witnesses will have heard of some of the other concerns about the North but one of the concerns about the North concerns ammonia as well. The witnesses have talked about the model moving on, moving towards Red II, and considering artificial fertilisers. What is happening, what should happen and what can happen in terms of the ammonia levels? What I say relates to the planning issue, which we have also heard about, in terms of locations. We do not want a situation whereby having an anaerobic digester located in one's area means damaging the ecology, biodiversity and water supply.