Dr. Kevin Hanrahan:

This line of questioning is really welcome in the context of the demand for analysis that informs policy. Some of us would say we model not policy or the policymaking process per sebut the consequences of policy options that the political process will develop. There is a chicken-and-egg issue here. I will speak about the economic research we in Teagasc have done. We are a State agency so we work a lot of the time on quality analysis with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. That is where our work in this area started. We work quite closely with that Department but we are quite clear about the economic space. We do not propose policies to the policymakers; we analyse the policies they develop that are informed by the research we do. We are not in the business - certainly, we do not see ourselves in the business - of writing what we should do. We try to be a bit more positive in our approach by saying these are the different options policymakers could choose and these are the consequences of option A, option B and option C. That is what we try to do in this work in respect of the scenarios we have looked at.

I agree with Professor Ó Gallachóir that there is an important role in educating policymakers and people involved in the political process such as Oireachtas Members, lobbyists, etc., to understand the role of modelling, how far down the road it can get you and the gaps we addressed in the last round of questions, which the model sometimes cannot answer at all but which are still pretty important. I am an economist, but there are more ways to look at a problem than through the lens of economics, and not all the answers come out of economists' mouths.

The circular economy is an active area of research within Teagasc. As for the modelling, we are still grappling with the definition of "circular economy" and where the circular economy starts. We need collectively to draw the map as to what is and is not in the circular economy. An awful lot of the agriculture and food industry is already circular, but research ongoing in Teagasc has identified that there are things that could be valorised to a greater extent within the existing agrifood sector that could have benefits not only in environmental efficiency but also economically in the form of greater value added or income earned in the economy. That is something in which we are involved.