Dr. Frank O'Mara:

There is not much more to say on that. It is the only option at the moment for most horticultural producers. The volume of peat that was being used for domestic horticultural production accounted for a small proportion of the overall volume of peat that was being extracted. To the best of my knowledge, it was in the low single figures as a percentage of the total.

It had been anticipated that while peat extraction for fuel would cease soon, horticultural peat extraction would continue for up to ten years. This issue has come very much as a surprise to the industry and an unanticipated issue for it to face in the next year. There are no good alternatives at the moment. The best option in respect of replacement would be that perhaps 30% of the peat would be replaced. That is what we appear to be looking at. There is currently no alternative to peat for the capping of mushrooms. Therefore, there is a big challenge for research to find ways around those issues.

Briefly, to back, Professor Boyle dealt with most of the issues raised by Deputy Carthy. On the beef issue, he compared our Irish grass-fed beef with feedlot-fed beef. Grass-fed beef is really a sustainable product because of the carbon sequestration associated with the grasslands that the cattle are raised on and the biodiversity in that type of production system. There is very little "food versus feed" competition. In other words, the animals are not eating food that could be eaten by humans. From an animal welfare point of view, the animals are very much in their natural surroundings. Beef production in Ireland is by and large very sustainable. That applies to both suckler beef and dairy calf to beef production. In fact, the carbon footprint of diary calf to beef production is even a bit lower than suckler beef production, because the emissions from the cow are carried or assigned to the milk that is produced. Both types of beef production are very sustainable systems. I agree with the Deputy that we should be seeking to improve the profitability of suckler beef production here in Ireland in any way we can. On the way in which the document portrays the figures, it was not our intention to imply that one needs to compensate for the other; it is just the mathematics of the way the emissions have gone over the last 20 years or so. There was a gradual decline up to about a decade ago and there has been a gradual increase in emissions over the last decade, which by and large has been associated with the rise in the dairy cow herd. At the same time, there has been a small drop in the suckler cow herd. It is not a question of one compensating for the other, but mathematically, that is effectively they way the figures were adding up.