Professor Myles Allen:

I would be happy to. On the Deputy's first point about rural constituencies, I want to remind her of Dr. Mitloehner's point about how we do not need farmers to feel threatened by this. In fact, it could easily be seen as an opportunity for farming. We are sort of saddled with this misperception of conflict because of the incorrect way in which we measure the impact of farming on climate. Notwithstanding all the other accounting and measurement issues that have been raised, this is a problem we do not need to have. If we actually measure the impact of the farmers in the Deputy's constituency on climate, on global temperature, rather than on this carbon footprint, farmers would be reassured by the results. That would be a very useful thing for Ireland to do and indeed to show to the rest of the European Union as a way forward. There may be other farming communities in the EU that have not got their minds around this issue as much as the Irish. I dare speculate here but maybe Irish farmers are a bit ahead of some of the other countries in the EU in thinking about this issue, so Ireland could do a favour to its European partners by pointing out that just with this simple, additional piece of information, that is, impact on global temperature, you can do a great deal to diffuse the animosity in this whole discussion.