Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is important to say that it is in order of priority and that it is not a choice. The “avoid” and the “shift” are a higher priority than the “improve”, which is where the EVs are.

I interjected a few times during the questioning by other members, but I still have my own to ask. Starting with the witnesses from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, I notice that the number of farms, or perhaps the portion of land, for organic farming is to increase from 2% to 7.5%. Is that the plan? I refer to an increase to 350,000 ha. It has also been stated, however, that the herd numbers can remain stable. If there is a large increase in organic farming does that not imply a much lower stocking rate and, ultimately, a lower herd number? It might not be the policy to reduce herd numbers, but will that be the effective outcome of increasing the share of organic farming? Can we go further in that regard? What are the obstacles to going beyond the target of 7.5%? I think that is the current EU target, but we are trying to catch up and go further in this context. Why, therefore, can we not go beyond 7.5%? Other European countries are way beyond it. I would have thought that we could follow and catch up in that regard.

In addition, does the Department have a diversification strategy? The vast majority of emissions are coming from the dairy herd and, as I understand it, the beef herd to a lesser extent. We want to make farming a viable choice for people and to sustain jobs in rural Ireland. Unless there is a diversification strategy, however, and perhaps there is one and I have just not seen it, I do not think we are going to reduce emissions as much as we need to.

Moving to transport, we could achieve our targets regarding private electric vehicle penetration increasing to approximately 850,000 vehicles by 2030. Unless we are displacing fossil fuel cars, however, it would still be possible for us to face an emissions' challenge in the transport sector. It was pointed out that we are more or less on target with the sales of electric vehicle and a pathway document is being followed in this regard. Are we seeing an equal reduction in the sales of fossil fuel vehicles? If we are not, then we are going down the path of having more vehicles on the roads. We might end up having 1 million electric vehicles, but we could also have 2 million vehicles using fossil fuels. If we were to have so many vehicles on our roads in 2030, then that is going to militate against our efforts to make it attractive to live in our villages, towns and cities. There is simply not enough road capacity in urban settlements to accommodate so many vehicles. Therefore, is there a target to reduce the overall number of vehicles and the number of fossil fuel vehicles? I direct my questions first to the witnesses from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.