Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This has been a very useful discussion. The takeaway for me is that we should move to developing the sorts of sectoral compacts that have been pretty successful in the Netherlands.

I certainly think of food, and you can see it in construction and probably in engineering. It is where you start to look at the whole responsibility, from, as Mr. Magee rightly said, design - they say 80% of environmental damage is baked in at the design stage - right through to the discarding and managing of waste. That is what they have done and it seems to bridge the siloed approach we have developed. Do the witnesses see merit in the committee recommending to the Government that it adopt a big tent approach in some key sectors which we want to be at the forefront of sustainability in ten years' time? We want to know what that means and what changes now, as well as to communicate and develop the momentum, much of it coming from the interaction. Processors can influence what farmers do. Supermarkets can influence what processors do. Consumers can influence what supermarkets do. There is a gain from this big tent approach. Would that pose difficulties for the witnesses? Would it be a productive use of our time to promote that idea?