Professor Alan Matthews:

We clearly have some levers we know we can pull. The issue here is that we want to ensure that farmers get credit in the national inventories where they make changes to their farming practices. We can measure animal numbers and tonnes of fertiliser spread relatively easily. It is more difficult, however, to capture changes in practices. I refer to examples such as whether tillage farmers have a cover crop in the winter, what they do with their crop residues, whether they leave them in the field or remove them, and if slurry tanks are covered, which serves to reduce emissions of ammonium greenhouse gases. We need much more information in that regard. However, I do not think that we need to wait for that kind of information in order to incentivise some of the required changes.

Turning to nature-based solutions, it is important to emphasise that the land sector - the so-called land use, land-use change and forestry, LULUCF sector, which is different from the agriculture emissions that we also referred to - is a net emitter in Ireland. The land sector in Ireland is not a sink for a net removal of carbon because we have been draining our organic soils for decades and the result is that they are now emitting a great deal of the carbon that they originally contained. Therefore, re-wetting some of those soils is certainly something which was included in the Ag-Climatise plan and we must emphasise that aspect more. It is not a silver bullet by any manner or means, however. Ms O'Neill alluded to issues regarding the verification of emissions, the carbon that might be sequestered, the permanence of that sequestration. Ultimately, we reach a sort of satiation level. It is, though, a lever which is available to us in the period up to 2030 and we certainly should make use of it. In overall terms, therefore, land is actually a net emitter in Ireland and that is another aspect where we differ from most other EU member states.

On the CAP and eco-schemes, I will ask the Deputy to come back to me if I have not fully understood the question. It is clear that farmers receive a basic income support payment at the moment. On top of that, they get a greening payment. That payment will disappear but, depending on the outcome of negotiations, somewhere between 25% and 30% of the Pillar 1 direct payments will be allocated to eco-schemes. That is potentially quite a significant step. It depends, of course, on how our strategic plan decides to use that funding but it is a considerable addition to the agri-environment climate funding we already have in Pillar 2. The issue is to ensure that we make better use of that funding in terms of climate action, biodiversity protection, habitat creation and so on than we have done with the schemes to date. I see it as a positive step and an additional lever we can use to incentivise climate action.

On anaerobic digestion, I agree with the Deputy that it seems a potentially attractive solution for some types of emissions. My understanding is that it is still an expensive solution, particularly if we just look at it in terms of the cost per emissions reduced. It may not necessarily suit the small-scale structure of Irish farms. One hears, for example, about the very large dairy units in California and that is one of the main ways in which they have succeeded in reducing their methane emissions but it will not necessarily apply in an Irish circumstance. We must try to invest in scaling down this technology so that it can be used. I am not sure it will ever be viable to use the technology at an individual farm level in an Irish context but perhaps we can use it as a part of co-operative or community-based solutions where a group of farmers might come together and agree to supply such a small-scale digester. That is a part of the innovation programme that is necessary.