Mr. Bill Callanan:

To be clear, I fully agree with the Deputy regarding the current measures being small and incremental. When we apply them to 125,000 farmers, however, that is when it all adds up. That is the space we are in. Regarding our internal considerations, the issues we are considering include the scope of carbon farming, the question of auditing and baseline development, the development of a voluntary carbon code for the sector, issues around finance and business models and also governance structures. Therefore, we are at the beginning of a process in that regard. We must be in step with what is happening at a European level, and we expect the paper in December to articulate some of the issues being seen at the European level. We should align with that.

At a concept level and an individual farm level, as I said, Bord Bia is doing carbon auditing at individual farm level. That is counting actions such as fertiliser usage, when animals are being let out, the use of manures and the output from a farm. That information is quite detailed at the level of the individual farm and it is developing. This is part of a process. I want to be clear that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good when we need to encourage people. We are not there with carbon trading, which is slightly different. We are certainly there in respect of the incentivisation of farmers towards carbon management, at whatever level.