Mr. Brian Lucas:

As I said, we produced a key issues paper for public consultation. It was available for public consultation between October 2019 and January 2020, and submissions were received from industry stakeholders as well as the general public and non-governmental organisations. All those submissions are available to view online.

As for the working group, as I said, some of the issues that have been identified during the review are medium to long-term issues and will require medium to long-term solutions such as alternatives to the use of peat in horticulture and the mushroom industry. This does not mean that any proposed changes to the legislation could not have been discussed in parallel with the setting up of the working group. Now that we have the working group, let us get everyone together. We know what needs to be done immediately. That has been made clear and was made clear by Deputies, Senators and the previous witnesses. Let us see whether we can come up with a solution to this problem. I have talked about the legislation. As I said, it is an area I do not want to go into very much but the committee can see what I have said already. There will not be easy solutions in the legislation. Previous witnesses have brought forward some ideas that can be discussed in the working group, and then the relevant Department can see whether those are feasible or can be introduced and be legally sound.