Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. To go back to the dairy industry, which I spoke about earlier, there is going to have to be some recognition that aggressive marketing of formula milk, both here and across the globe, supports this carbon-intensive form of agriculture to an extent that probably is not necessary and undermines breastfeeding. That aside, let me go back to ACRES. It has one main objective and that is to get us to our goals and to our target. The other objective obviously is to support farmers in doing that. I understand the Department has increased the scheme to 46,000 farmers. I know farmers and meet with farmers all the time in the west of Ireland and they are very happy with ACRES. The Cathaoirleach spoke about how it will actually help us to reach our targets. The Minister referred to one element, the rewetting of peat soils. The amount that is being achieved through ACRES seems very low. I am a little concerned if it is around the 3,000 ha level because, as the Minister said, the target is 80,000 ha by 2030. We have had people come in from other Departments and talk about different programmes that are happening but we want to know what the actual impact of each of those of programmes is. It is not just about pilots. It cannot just be about looking at the data anymore. We may not know precisely about our peat soils but we know we have them and we have proper analysis and academic research that shows the impact of rewetting. Can the Minister give more precise figures, if not today then at some point, on the impact of the programme in the midlands and so on across the country? We need to see how the Department will reach its targets by 2025 and by 2030.