Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of questions for each witness. Professor Buckley makes a very valid point that on tapping into nature's capacity to provide its own solutions that can really supplement man-made solutions. Does Professor Buckley envisage many sharp trade-offs being made? How should these be made? For example, there is a choice between conifers and hardwoods. If one were to look at a narrow carbon reduction, one would always pick conifers. If one were to look at wider biodiversity concerns, one would want a healthy balanced mix or whatever. Is that just one example of many? How are those trade-offs - oft they be made in creating a framework Bill - to be handled?

The second point is that land use, if included in our inventory, would put us badly into the negative.

It is another 4 million tonnes negative of CO2 that we create each year. Does that hamper our ability to seize opportunities from better land use and biodiversity as part of our response? In other words, we go 4 million tonnes of CO2 backwards before we start to make any progress.

On Dr. Glynn's questions, this goes to the matter of what we are trying to do in legislation. Dr. Glynn seems to be arguing for a preference for CO2 capture and storage in legislation because it has been undervalued to date. He also pointed out that there is no territory where CO2 capture and storage can occur in Ireland. Are these legislative barriers or are there legislative provisions that would change that? From an economists' point of view, one would be inclined to pick the cheapest thing, whatever that is, and take a long view. Maybe policymakers have been too myopic and have not looked far enough ahead.

I was also intrigued by his reference to territorial waters and whether that represents an opportunity. I have heard the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence, Deputy Coveney, for example, who would not be living 100 miles away from Dr. Glynn, articulate the potential of our marine assets to be a sink and to grow marine products. Is there an untapped potential there and does it have implications for the legislative provision we ought to be making here?