Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

In a point related to Senator Paul Daly's question, one of the witnesses noted that we have gone from 1% to 2% land cover in ten years in respect of organics. This is not surprising, given that less than 1% of the annual departmental budget is spent on organics. I believe it is roughly €15 million or €16 million out of a total of €1.8 billion. Moreover, Bord Bia spends about 2% of its budget on organic food promotion, so this is not really a surprise. I chair the environment and climate action committee and by coincidence, we had an interesting session this morning that touched on organics. We had Macra na Feirme and Dr. Oliver Moore from UCC before us. Dr. Moore stated that the organic action plan we have been following will not cut it and that we need a new one. He said that if we want to get to 7.5% organics, we need to be spending 7.5%. Bord Bia needs to be spending that percentage of its budget and the Department needs to be spending that percentage as well by 2026. Perhaps the witnesses could comment on that. Are we on track for that level of spending? If not, I would suggest we are not on track to meet our targets on organics.