Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 2 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Reduction of Carbon Emissions of 51% by 2030: Discussion (Resumed)

Photo of John McGahonJohn McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. This has been enjoyable. I get what they are saying. The language that we use is important. It is about reward, incentivising change and taking a logical approach to make it as easy as possible and to have a financial incentive for people to make these changes, which at the same time will benefit our environment. It is great to hear Mr. Sheehan's point because I believe in it. Just because we are a small country, there is no need for Ireland not to show leadership, regardless of what other countries are doing. With regard to what other countries are doing, it is important to know, when we talk about financial rewards that we can offer, if anything like that is happening in other European countries which we can look to to take advice from, where that type of payment rewards people for engaging in biodiversity and localised ecosystems are being used. Is that being looked at anywhere else in the world?

The witnesses have discussed financial incentives and how much that would achieve. That question has been dealt with. The other question is how we can encourage farmers to take greater ownership of the environmental agenda. How can we encourage individual people to get more involved with shaping that agenda themselves? It is often done through representative bodies or through organisations such as the witnesses' organisations. How do we encourage individual farmers in this country to say that they want to get on board with and move towards this?

If this app was to be rolled out nationwide, would that be a financial burden? What would the cost be to make that wide scale so that it could be used nationwide? A witness said that it is up to farmers themselves to map that land through the app. More information on how the app would work and how it would be rolled out nationwide would be useful.

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