Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Most of the questions have been answered. I thank the witnesses for their detailed contributions. Some of my fears have been allayed by listening to them, especially around the need for an annual review. A red flag for me is that we would go down the road of what happened with incineration in other countries, in that they are now having to import the stock to feed the incinerators. One does not want to see us go too big on AD and then have a situation where we are not addressing waste reduction, which is also part of our circular economy strategy. Whether our food-waste reductions of 50% are aspirational, like all of our targets, we want to hit them because we have no choice but to do so.

There is always going to be food waste, but we want to reduce it. It is similar with our biodiversity targets and forestry targets. I have concerns about how much of that is factored into the risk assessment and as to how much we see AD. The witness said 1.6 TWh but then mentioned 18 TWh. What is a sustainable percentage for AD to be fulfilling if we are to meet all those other targets we want?

The other concern relates to the silage. University College Cork, UCC, said that the fodder shortage we saw in 2018 is twice as likely to happen now because of climate change. If we have a crop failure for silage and we are short of fodder to feed the livestock, and obviously the preferred option is to feed the livestock and not feed the AD, where will the feedstock come from? Will it have to be imported into the country to feed the AD if we become dependent on it?

Those are my concerns. There is no doubt that this is part of the solution, but we do not want to fall into the situation where Nordic countries are having to import waste to feed incinerators.

I have a question for Dr. Beausang. The SEAI heat study is feeding into much of the policy formulation at present. Does she think it has taken account of the risks she has flagged regarding methane leakage?