Mr. Pádraic Fogarty:

I thank Senator O’Reilly for her questions. I will deal with two of those questions that I may be able to answer. One is to do with the climate impacts on diversity. Climate change is very much pulling the rug from under ecosystems. We already have all of these pressures from habitat loss to over-exploitation, invasive species and pollution. We then have climate on top of that. We do not know the effect that will have on our peatlands. We know that prolonged droughts can turn peatlands from carbon sinks to carbon emitters. Perhaps this is most significantly felt in the ocean, where climate change is acidifying, warming and contributing to the pollution of it where it is running out of oxygen. These are very significant challenges for ecosystems in respect of climate change.

On farming and soil, the biodiversity of our soil is something that is widely unrecognised and under-studied. We do not know a great deal about it. We know that worms, for instance, are essential to the health of soil in the recycling of nutrients. A study from England in recent years showed that nearly half of the fields in England did not even have worms, or had very few of them. This aspect of soil is very much under-studied. Our view of fertility on farm soils has heretofore focused on the chemistry of the soil and not on its biology. There are farmers in Ireland who are practising what is called regenerative farming, which is about bringing the life back to the soil and enhancing the natural fertility of it. That is producing enormous benefits for farmers as well as drawing carbon out of the air and storing it in the soil. There are many co-benefits to that.