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

I welcome our guests and thank them for coming up to us to share their technology and understanding of the sector. It is appreciated and I welcome this science-led approach. The videos the witnesses showed us in the private session were interesting.

I want to ask about the 54% methane reduction. I accept that it is independently peer-reviewed but I want to get clarity. The witnesses are probably talking about methane associated with slurry waste as opposed to the other end, which is probably the bigger challenge in agriculture. Notwithstanding that, it is a fair point that methane is associated with the degradation of waste, which we should seek to reduce. I ask the witnesses to confirm that.

I agree with them in principle on having an emissions reduction fund. We should be investing to get emissions reductions now. Any fund the State would put in place would need to be robust, transparent and verifiable and would need to achieve what it sets out to achieve. The State should carefully consider that because we are talking about a large amount of money, between €30 million and €40 million per annum for eight years. If it could be shown to work there is a strong case for it.

I ask the witnesses to enlighten us on what funding is in place for this kind of technology development and research in the private sector. If there is no funding, that is remiss given the challenge we have. Are similar funds in place overseas and in other jurisdictions that Ireland can look at? In one of the videos we saw, a farmer from County Cork outlined that fertiliser costs on his farm had significantly reduced, which is positive. We frequently hear in this committee how farmers are struggling with input costs. It is welcome that there is a technology that can help them to reduce those costs and be economically sustainable.

This leads me to the question of environmental sustainability. Has any research been done by the witnesses or can they point to any research that would support the idea that this technology can reduce the local impacts of fertiliser on water courses and so on? We have a huge challenge in that regard also, notwithstanding the climate challenge we face. The rivers of Ireland have degraded significantly in recent decades and a lot of that is due to slurry run-off and increased use of nitrates related to fertiliser and so on. If there is research to show this technology can help the environment at local level, particularly with regard to water quality, I would like to hear about it.