Mr. Bill Callanan:

That is a matter for the Government. It will have to go through the pluses and minuses in that regard. What I must be clear about is that we have a pathway that we fully understand can achieve a certain level without reducing the national herd overall. That is infinitely more challenging as the numbers go up. We have to recognise that.

In terms of the international discussion on food production, other countries are looking at the difficulties relating to and contentiousness of agriculture. I will articulate some of those. By way of example, the proposals in terms of the EU Fit for 55 package, which are not agreed as yet, relate to an integrated agriculture and land use sector by 2035. That would require something like a 20% reduction in overall emissions at European level and an approximate 20% increase in removals. In its legislation, New Zealand has segregated methane out and imposed a 10% target in respect of its reductions. We know from looking at other plans, for example, those of Denmark and elsewhere, that countries are similarly challenged with regard to the appropriate level of ambition.

What we are seeing through the agricultural food process is that Ireland will have to be a leader, especially in terms of pasture-based systems, which are positive. If we look at that suggestion in terms of how we feed the world and if we go look back 100 years, we had a situation even then whereby we were exporting quite a number of foodstuffs out of the country. That is the history of our production system. In defence of that system and in the context of international comparisons, rain-fed, grass-based systems hold up very well from any carbon counting point of view. They look particularly good in that regard.

I often describe the challenges relating to water in terms of them not being about water quality internationally. It is actually a case of the availability of water whereby more than 80% of all abstracted water is used for irrigation of crops for food production. We do not have that problem here. In the context of our agriculture system, we have issues in terms of improving water quality. I want to be very clear with the committee. By comparison, however, we are in the top one third in Europe in the context of water quality when it comes to that production system. We certainly have much in our production system that speaks very favourably to the way it is structured.

Our system is based on the family farm model. If we look at the dairy production system, we can see that dairy farmers generate a commercial income by going through processors that are predominantly owned by the producers that supply them, and then supply into the marketplace. That is a very positive system whereby we supply products through a processing system that is owned, in the main, especially in terms of dairy, by the farmers themselves. Those products are then sent to the marketplace, which, internationally, recognises ours as a very favourable production system. If it did not, we would not have access to some of the premium markets to which we currently have access.