Mr. Tadhg Buckley:

The Deputy asked why we quoted the figures on passenger numbers and cars. The main reason was when we speak to farmers throughout the country, especially over the past 18 months, they feel completely scapegoated in the commentary on the challenge we face. The vast bulk of farmers fully accept they have a role to play, but feel they are being unduly targeted in much of the commentary in the media and other places over the past 18 months, in particular.

What we wanted to do was put it in context that absolutely we have a role to play, but the growth in cattle numbers over the past 30 years is very small, whatever way one looks at it, relative to other parts of the economy. We are not trying to pit one sector against the other. We are trying to put in context that we have a challenge, but it is not painted in the same way it sometimes is with regard to the growth that has happened in agriculture.

If one looks at the EPA emission numbers from agriculture for 1990 versus 2019, they are more or less the same. We speak about the growth in dairy. There were milk quotas in place for dairy for 30 years and the growth that has happened over the past number of years simply was because of the fact there was absolutely no growth for 30 years and numbers fell continuously. We wanted to put context on what has happened in relative size of the emissions coming from agriculture relative to other sectors and also show that