Mr. Niall ? Brolch?in:

Absolutely. There is a lot of talk about water. We were involved in the nature restoration law discussions with the European Commission recently. It is setting targets for 2030 on peatland, forestry and so on. People need to look at those as well and how consistent they are with the Irish targets. We had an interesting discussion with a French official from the European Commission. He suggested that water is going to be such a precious commodity in the future that we will need to have ways of storing it. He says that what will happen in terms of food production is that it is definitely going to start moving north. We had a bit of a contretemps. He comes from the Bordeaux region and he said they would not be growing grapes any more, they would be growing coconuts and that grapes would be grown in Ireland. This sort of planning for the future sounds a bit crazy and strange, but even in our lifetime the nature of farming and land use has changed. We can see that in the type of things we can grow. The idea of having vineyards in Ireland at some point in the future is not that fanciful. It would have been a crazy thing to say when I was a young lad but it is not any more.

I take all the points made about water. The key point is that the modelling and management of it is crucial. The Dutch are now the experts in this regard. The Deputy is probably well aware that the Dutch Government has paid to some extent for the restoration of peatlands in Ireland because the Netherlands has mined most of its peat and its peatlands are now below sea level. There is huge subsidence from 1300 to 1900. They pretty much hollowed out the Netherlands and built a big wall around it. That is not what any of us want to see for Ireland. We do need to build up our peatlands.