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

Nitrous oxide is between 200 and 300 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas so it is critically important to reduce such emissions. If you can reduce nitrous oxide at all, it makes the challenge a lot easier. To be fair to the Minister, the reduction is due to the promotion of better farming practices and farming without excess use of nitrogen. A lot of it is due to the price increase following the war in Ukraine. I guess my fear would be that prices would come down again and we might be in the situation where the Minister's challenge is greater and farmers start to use chemical fertiliser again. Is there any indication that the measures the Minister has brought in are working? Have they shown farmers that they can grow sufficient grass without the use of chemical fertiliser and that they will not need to revert to chemical fertiliser if it becomes cheaper, depending on the geopolitical situation? In 2018 there was very high usage of chemical fertilisers and there was a drought. I think that farmers used fertiliser because they struggled to grow grass but a lot of that oxidised and went up into the atmosphere which led to very high emissions. I think we must make sure that the methods of growing grass without chemical fertiliser work and that farmers have confidence because fertilisers do not just have an environmental impact; there is also a huge cost issue.