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

I thank our guests for their presentation. It was stated that agricultural expansion is happening at the expense of the environment. I would be interested to hear the witnesses elaborate on that. The case has been made that Ireland has grass-based production and, as such, is environmentally superior to many of the alternatives, certainly within Europe.

It was also stated that there need not be a conflict and argued that we can break the link between the herd and the environment. Again, I would like to hear more about that. Last week, we heard from Professor Alan Matthews, who said that if the herd stabilised, there would be a 3% decline per decade in methane. There seem to be differences in opinion on the exact implications for the herd on methane. There are conflicting arguments on the short life of methane, as well as the implications that has. As the experts in this area, could the witnesses shed light on this biogenic methane discussion?

The EPA argues for a measurable, reportable and verifiable holistic and catchment approach. What new tools might this involve? I know of the ones it has talked about, namely, fertiliser and the Teagasc MACC. However, are the witnesses saying that we can entirely break the link through this holistic and catchment approach? What exactly are we talking about here? Are we talking about, as we heard last week, pricing, carbon, paying farmers to farm carbon and developing policy tools that pay for carbon sequestration? Are these what they have in mind?

Can the EPA point to any countries where agriculture has managed the sort of transition that it describes, which we could perhaps model. Ultimately, we want to see farmers having a good family farm income. If farmers' incomes from traditional methods of agricultural expansion are to be curtailed, they will ask where new sources of farm income will come from. It would be helpful to the committee to understand where the EPA sees new sources of farm income coming from.