Mr. Francie Gorman:

I welcome the Deputy's comments regarding the derogation. It is very important that we hold that derogation. It affects farmers in all parts of the country and in every sector. What I will say about our political masters in Europe is that the past month has shown that if they want to do something, they can do it. They amended our methane targets up to 2040 and got rid of the sustainable use regulation. They can do it if they want to.

The Deputy asked for four recommendations. The first is to keep the pressure on our political masters in Europe and on our Commissioner. The nitrates review in 2022 was flawed. We cannot go back there again. We need to ensure the review of the next nitrates action programme is done in a proper way. The second recommendation is to give us time. The third thing is to give us certainty about where we go four or five years down the road. Farmers cannot be expected to plan based on a target that is one or two years down the road. The fourth thing is that all farmers should be eligible for grant aid to put that slurry storage capacity in place. As Mr. Murphy noted earlier, it is a national asset. AD will not solve the problem for us in this nitrates review because it will not be done quickly enough. If we had a proper policy around it 20 years ago, we could possibly say that AD might be part of the answer but in terms of holding onto this derogation, AD is not the answer because it will not happen quickly enough. The whole question of AD, forestry and solar feeds into the whole land use area, even around nature restoration and rewetting. That is probably a bigger debate we need to have now for the next five to ten years but it will not sort this problem for us. What will sort it for us is to get delivery on the issues we have raised. We can demonstrate to the European Union or a Commissioner that what we are doing will deliver a stabilisation or improvement in water quality. We have to point out to them the importance of holding onto that derogation. As Mr. Buckley stated, it is the one advantage we have over our fellow Europeans in terms of how we produce food. It is important to state that we are a food-producing nation. That is what we do. It is what we should continue to do. We do not have heavy industry to offset our emissions in terms of how we meet our targets. We have to be given credit for that as well. We produce food more sustainably than is done in most places on the planet. If we do not do it here, it will be done somewhere else, which will cause more damage to the planet in terms of emissions. I know we are talking about water quality here. It is important that we get time for those measures to work.