Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is an opportunity to pivot away from that, and we need to examine that more and more. While concrete will always be required for some part of the building materials we use, the difficulty is that a lot of the alternatives are also oil-based or industry-based products that are coming forward and that is an issue as well. Many years ago, I worked on a number of eco-projects and we used timber frame construction and hemp and lime as the infill. One of the problems we had at the time was that the hemp chips had to be imported from France, which is still the case. In the case of projects we do not want to talk about anymore, such as Bord na Móna, it was the State that did it, and when the project was well established, it was able to get legs. The forestry industry is an example of that, where Coillte developed a forestry model that has now become a private model in a lot of cases. There needs to be an emphasis on this, with Government recognition. To have carbon capture with whatever products are needed, whether forestry, hemp or something else, it will have to be grown, with the carbon taken in, captured and held in the building. To get farmers to buy in to that, they will have to be certain there will be a market and a long-term future in it. To make that happen-----