Mr. Tadhg Buckley:

We do hear that the derogation is giving us a competitive advantage. There is a lack of understanding on that and it is something we will continue to work on. As we said earlier, it is just levelling the playing pitch because we are at a disadvantage compared to our European counterparts because we have very high costs of production, apart from grass. We have the highest concentrate feed prices in Europe. We have gone through all of these already. Every EU member state has its priorities and they differ across the European Union. In Poland, for example, Ukrainian grain was a huge issue and had a massive impact on its agricultural economy. We need to understand that this does not give us a free pass or put us way ahead. It just enables us to compete internationally.

There are a couple of things on the storage requirement. First, a review by Teagasc is ongoing to examine the levels of production of slurry from animals on a weekly basis. That is showing that we are probably underestimating slurry production on the dairy cow side. That will probably finish in May. That will probably lead to farmers being required to put in more storage in time. That needs to be supported from a grant aid perspective as ourselves and IFA have said. It is at a 70% level.

As well as that, we cannot say we will increase the storage period until we know the outcome of the review. That will dictate the levels of storage put in over the long term. Aligned to that, if we want farmers to make that investment, we have to give them certainty, as we spoke about earlier.

On anaerobic digestion, I completely agree with the Senator. The issue is, as Mr. Murphy said, time is not our friend. We are still waiting for a biomethane strategy from the Government in terms of the strategy on anaerobic digestion. In any country in Europe where anaerobic digestion has worked, it has got a proper State-driven policy framework to drive the industry. It is part of the solution, for sure, and needs to be accelerated at policy level so we can start developing it. The problem is it will take years.