Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Whitmore. I will use this Government slot as no other Government members are indicating. I wish to pick up the Deputy's question on the challenge of sustainable food production and how we use land. I will focus on dairy. It is arguably the food the wider world needs and it is premium markets we are sending it to, which is certainly good for our economy and for those involved in the dairy sector, but it is arguable whether this is the food South Korea or developing nations need. The Minister might comment on that.

Picking up on Deputy Bruton's question, we are here because there is a provision built into the climate Act for a climate action plan to be published annually if we identify we are off track, and in pretty much every sector we are currently off track, so we are in a situation where we are having a revised climate action plan every year. With every such plan, new policies and measures have to be announced and added to the previous plan in order to try to get us back on track. The timing of this meeting and the meetings with the other Ministers is after the report of the Climate Change Advisory Council and the EPA report in the summer, but prior to the revision of the climate action plan. The purpose of having any Minister before this committee is to challenge the policies and for the Minister to inform us of what new measures may be coming down the track in the latest iteration of the climate action plan. The Minister has outlined in his statement what is being done currently and we welcome that, but given we are off track and acknowledging the very significant challenges that are there, what new measures does he see being added to the plan that will be published, I think, in a few weeks' time?

On anaerobic digestion, there is quite an ambitious plan for I think 200 digesters across the country by 2030. I cannot remember how many terawatt hours of energy that is. There is a conflict between AD and food production. The Minister must manage that conflict and I am interested to hear his thoughts on it. There is of course a conflict between biodiversity and nature protection and restoration and food production and anaerobic digestion as well, so it is not an easy one to get right. How does the Minister see that conflict being managed? We heard about a year ago from a researcher about the challenge of fugitive methane emissions from anaerobic digestion. This is an issue that is well-known in the fossil fuel industry. When natural gas or methane escapes up into the atmosphere it is, depending on the timeframe one is looking at, anything between 25 times and 85 times worse than carbon dioxide, so we must do everything we can to ensure there are not fugitive emissions from the agriculture sector as well as the fossil fuel industry. Are there measures or has the Minister's Department been thinking about how we can ensure that as we develop the AD sector in Ireland fugitive emissions do not become a future problem for us?