Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I agree with everything Ms Donnelly said. A few years ago, I was involved in a campaign to extend wind energy facilities. There was significant opposition to that. People will say that the community was not involved and so forth, but that extension would have had a major impact had we gone ahead with it then. Years later, we have to try to catch up.

People present a question to me that I will put to the witnesses. There are alternatives and food producers have to diversify. Promoters of the proposal say that we can grow trees. That is correct but, as far as I am aware, we cannot eat trees. Wherever it comes from, we need to be able to produce sufficient food to meet our own needs. Otherwise, we will be dependent on imports. If that happens, there will be problems owing to, for example, transport. Our levels will tick up, leaving us in big trouble. As I told an earlier meeting, just one week of food shortages would lead to immediate panic, and understandably so. This is the nub of the issue.

I recognise that we are a signatory to the Paris Agreement. The group that visited me the other night suggested that not all signatories were keeping to their commitments and that, while we were endeavouring to do so, bigger, better, wealthier and more powerful countries were not.