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

I thank the witnesses for their presentations, which were really interesting. I have two questions. It is very clear that there are great co-benefits to dealing with climate and biodiversity issues, but where there are trade-offs, that is to say, where there must be change in areas in which people are making a living, when dealing with climate you can talk about greenhouse gases and put a price on the associated costs, and they are talking about a carbon tax of €100 per tonne by 2030 and €250 per tonne by 2050, so you can get a sense of the scale of subsidy that must be built into policy to achieve climate action-related reductions, so can something similar be done in respect of biodiversity?

Can a given farm be benchmarked against wider statistics with regard to its carbon and biodiversity footprints so that some sort of payment to farmers for improving their biodiversity and carbon profiles could be calculated? To drive policy forward, we have to be able to put some sort of a price on what is to be paid to farmers relative to what we get back from them, which would have to be verified. I suppose the two questions are two sides of the one question.