Mr. Bill Callanan:

As a general comment, the Department has always been conscious of facilitating the sector with regard to achievement of its sustainability targets. They are tied in with those regulatory targets as well as market-orientated targets. The way I describe it to farmers is that there is effectively a hierarchy regarding food. If you are hungry, it is about availability and you are not concerned beyond that. When that is achieved, it is about food safety. That is not universally present across the world. Then it is about sustainability and that is very much the marketplace we are exporting to. Finally, food and nutrition is going to be a big issue into the future.

The sector has ambitions in the context of achieving sustainability along with the regulatory side of things. The CAP plan has always been cognisant of that. The Department has, for example, worked with the NPWS on the identification of where the priorities areas are for participation in agri-environment and with the EPA on water quality actions. We work very much hand in glove with the other organisations on the development of the appropriate actions in the right places.

On the nature-based solutions the Senator talked about, there are opportunities. It is around creating awareness and understanding. By way of example, ACRES today has somewhere around 600,000 ha of peat soils under agri-environment performance measures. That is a mixture of commonage, lowland peat soils, etc., that are subject to payments based on how effective they are and so forth. It is illustrative of how we combine the likes of an agri-environment scheme that is targeted with what are national ambitions, be it nature restoration, our objectives under LULUCF or whatever. We are well engaged on that through good participation with stakeholders and in terms of explaining and bringing them on the journey with us.