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

I welcome our guests. It is wonderful to have four of them in the committee room and fantastic to be back to having witnesses in the committee room. I also welcome Mr. Sheehan, who is joining us online. Mr. Sheehan and I met in the climate committee five or six months ago and our session then was very interesting. I am not coming at this from a farming background and would not pretend to know as much as my colleagues on farming. However, I sit on the climate committee and we spend a lot of time tearing our hair out trying to figure out how to reduce emissions, sequester and offset carbon and so on. Nobody in Ireland has the answer yet but enhancing and promoting new or existing hedgerows looks like a win-win. That may be simplistic and I defer to others' expertise. I would like to hear more. I apologise because I missed the start of the meeting and some of this may have been covered but will the witnesses take me back over the climate potential of hedgerows? Dr. Moore mentioned the quality of the existing hedgerows and their importance. There is a different conversation about new hedgerows. He might elaborate on those two sides to it. I would like to hear from Mr. Hickey and Mr. Sheehan, who are active farmers, on how beneficial hedgerows are in day-to-day farming. It is important the committee hears that.