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

I thank both of guests for their presentations. I wish to ask about the progress that has been made by other EU member states. I see that overall agricultural emissions among the EU 28 were static over the period from 2005 to 2016. That suggests there is not much innovation going on in the rest of Europe. What does that mean for us? We know Europe is making progress, but not in agriculture.

I have an allied question for Professor Matthews. I ask him to clarify exactly what he is saying about what we need to do on methane. Perhaps I mistook it, but I took him to say that if we were to reduce methane by 3% per decade, we would stabilise the contribution of methane. As I understood, if we want to cool, we must reduce by more than 3% per annum. That is not a very ambitious target over a ten-year period and people have been talking about far higher targets. Can the professor clarify that?

The key issue I want to raise is what scale of change is possible in farming. Professor Matthews in particular, with his knowledge of a farming background, is best qualified to answer that. What is practical for us to expect the agricultural sector to achieve, given all the structural issues we know about it?

My next question relates to carbon farming. I am sympathetic to the suggestion Professor Matthews is making that we pay farmers to farm carbon. It then seemed that Ms O'Neill was pulling the mat from under that idea by saying sequestration cannot be used in that way. If we want farmers to do things such as re-wetting soil, planting forests or whatever, we cannot expect them to deliver the 3.5 million tonnes by which Professor Matthews is saying our land use is in arrears and only then start paying them.

That is just not practical politics. As the Kerryman would say, you cannot start from there. If we buy into carbon farming, which is a good idea, what policy tools would we put in place to implement it? Farmers should be able to say that in ten years' time, they will be generating X from carbon farming and Y from their livestock, dairy or crops and then, with those two sources of income, they could have a viable family farm. Those are my questions.