Dr. James Moran:

Regarding our ambition, we are heading towards a cliff edge, as Deputy Whitmore said, in 2025 or 2026, and the more we delay action, the less of an incremental approach we take, and if we do not make positive changes sooner rather than later, the more we will have to fall at one point or another. Reading some of the EU targets, we are talking about carbon neutrality by 2050. That is the overall target we are looking towards, but in respect of the Green Deal, in the agriculture, forestry and other land use sector, the European target is to be carbon-neutral by 2035. If we are not working seriously now with higher level ambition to 2025 and 2030, working towards carbon neutrality in the agriculture, forestry and other land use sector, we will not have a chance of meeting the European target for 2035, which is not coming through in the narrative at all at the moment. The science says it, the Government knows it and the main Opposition party knows it as well. We have to meet these targets, and the more we delay action the more difficult it will be.

We should take more positive action now, have an ambitious CAP, for example, set our targets at a higher level of ambition and not roll back as we have seen in the base line conditionality. We need to drive on eco schemes that deliver positive action. With many of the current eco schemes, we know that when they are designed they will not do anything beyond business as usual. There is €300 million per annum invested in that. That a government would do such a thing is crucifiable. In addition, we have to stop having what we call indirect climate actions or agri-environment actions. If we are calling something an agri-environment or a climate action and we are thinking of it as having only an indirect benefit to the climate, it is not climate action. We have no more time for that sort of stuff.

We need to take an incremental approach towards the targets for 2035 and 2050, but the approach we have taken from the start has been very much delayed, considering we have been such a laggard for so long. The delaying will only make it more painful further down the line. If we do it right, based on what we have seen in the projects and the examples given here, it does not need to be painful. We can build a farm economic system, stepping in in the mid-term with public funds to pay for the targets we want to achieve. There is no way around this. If we want to change our agricultural system - and much of it at the moment is based on production subsidies or still tied to past production levels - we need to tie that now to environmental performance.

We are under-ambitious as well in the budget that has been assigned to the agri-environmental schemes to make some of this change happen. We estimated in some of our initial calculations that we needed a budget of approximately €400 million for agri-environmental schemes. We have in the budget that was recently published €300 million per annum, so it is about 25% short to realise the vision we have. That answers Deputy Whitmore's question a small bit.

The labelling systems are quite a difficult matter. There are many more people who are an awful lot more expert in this within Bord Bia and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. There is European labelling legislation that has to be taken into account as well. I know from talking to some colleagues recently that there have been webinars on this, and there is Mr. Sheehan's work with his new European innovative partnership project to see if he can develop labelling in this regard, but it is not easy. It is more in the realm of business, marketers and scientists. If, however, the Government gives clear signals that we want to differentiate products, and if the industry takes a lead on this and states it wants a label that means something in respect of environment delivery, the expertise is elsewhere in terms of the industry and the Bord Bias and marketeers of this world to make that happen but, again, the will is needed to make it happen.