Mr. John Hourigan:

Yes. The special case is one thing but the facts are so important here. The removals by Irish forestry are huge. A paper was produced last week by Gary Lanigan of Teagasc. In the inventory you will find they say Irish mineral soils remove 2.3 million tonnes per year. Gary Lanigan's research has shown that is an underestimation by approximately seven times. Irish mineral soils, according to him, are approximately 15 million tonnes per year. The inventory says 2.3 million. He also mentioned the research on peatlands, which is not completed yet, but he thinks they are overestimated by a factor of at least 2. They have 8.5 million tonnes in for emissions by peatlands. It is probably nearer to 4 million but there is no accurate figures on that. The figures by Gary Lanigan are out, they are current, they are correct and they are massive. That is 1.4 to 1.5 tonnes per acre per annum being removed by Irish grassland farmers. According to the research in places like Florida and Georgia, they are dealing with very depleted soils but they are doing 3.6 tonnes per acre per annum and their method of combating climate change is intensive, grass-based dairy. That is extraordinary. They say the way to take carbon out of the air is to convert the arable land to grass and put intensive grazing animals on it and that is what we are doing.