Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact this meeting is taking place. I apologise because I am at the Committee of Public Accounts as well, so I will be in and out of both. I thank Mr. Savage for his opening statement.

When we talk about greenhouse gas emissions, there are three strands to the discussion: the global targets and ambitions that are agreed; the national implementation of those targets; and, particularly in the context of agriculture, the on-farm basis on which those national targets are set. That third strand has been completely lost, despite the fact that, in reality, we will not and cannot effectively and fairly meet our national targets without getting the on-farm process right - in other words, without being able to measure and account for the level of sequestration, storage and emission that takes place on every farm in order that we can reward good behaviour and tackle negative behaviour as it becomes evident. It cannot become evident, however, unless we have some way of measuring it on an on-farm basis.

Mr. Savage's analogy of cattle being like cars is a good one. At present, extrapolating the position of one versus the other, if somebody were to go to the expense of purchasing an electric car, we would continue to penalise him or her because of somebody else driving the 4 l gas guzzler to which Mr. Savage referred. Therein lies the difficulty in getting large numbers of farmers to make the types of changes that are necessary. We are not properly incentivising them to make those moves and those investments.

As for comments that more attention needs to be paid to measuring and establishing the correct metrics, what precisely do we need to measure better? What are the correct metrics Mr. Savage has said we need to adopt? He touched on that, but could he elaborate further?

Members of both committees will be familiar with Teagasc. It has set out that existing technologies and evolving technologies and practices could be sufficient to get us to 18% of the emissions reductions required. We know that the 2020 sectoral targets require us to get to between 22% and 30%. In Mr. Savage's view, what is the scope and the capacity of technologies such as the ones his company uses, but others as well, to fill the gap between the 18% Teagasc says is achievable and the more ambitious target that is likely to be applied to the sector?