Mr. Paul Kelly:

It is worth noting that approximately 80% of emissions in the agrifood sector are pre-factory. They are happening at farm level and I believe that is where a large amount of the focus will have to be.

By virtue of Ireland's having a large agrifood sector in comparison to the rest of the economy and Europe, our non-ETS emissions are much higher than those in other EU member states. That also highlights the importance of the sector. However, it must be taken into account in European terms that agricultural production here, particularly meat and dairy, is very environmentally sustainable.

At national level, while the overall agrifood strategy, Food Harvest 2020, is expansionary and has targets of a 42% increase in agrifood exports and a 50% increase in milk production, it has smart green growth as its vision. The "green" part of this is particularly relevant to this committee.

I would also argue that "smart" is relevant as well because much of the intellectual property development that will take place in food products, processing systems and production systems is interlinked. These things are not being looked at in isolation and are highly relevant to the subject matter today.

In respect of it being a large percentage of non-ETS emissions and the issue of targets versus roadmaps, we would strongly argue that in terms of the accounting practices, this needs to be done at European level, as is the case for the emissions trading scheme, namely, industry. I mentioned that in my opening statement. When we are looking at agricultural emissions, we should be looking at them in a European context rather than exclusively in an Irish context.

If we look at specific targets from an Irish perspective, because of the outlier status of Ireland - for good reasons as it is a very important sector - all we would do is disadvantage Irish agriculture in comparison with competitors who, in our view, have less sustainable farming practices. This is backed up by the facts about which Ms O'Shea will speak shortly.

In respect of the roadmap itself, we would argue that sectoral roadmaps are the appropriate approach to take, provided they are dealt with in a rigorous fashion. Our understanding is that to date, the work done by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and its agencies on independent environmental analysis of Food Harvest 2020, which has been under way since last year, is appropriate and rigorous. That is being done in consultation with the Environment Directorate-General, is following the principles laid down for strategic environmental assessments and is examining all the relevant criteria, including greenhouse gas emissions. Our view would be that the outputs of that process will lead to an appropriate roadmap for the sector in question.

In respect of the business imperative behind this, we are an exporting country. We export 80% by volume of our food production. We are very much a business-to-business operator. In other words, we are selling an awful lot of our products directly into food service companies, directly into retail as private label and directly to multinational food companies as food ingredients. Those companies now have very rigorous sustainability criteria. That is the simple business reality and is what we must deal with at company and national level. All this additional growth that will come out of the sector will not be sold here in Ireland. We are a small domestic market. There are about six million people on the island. If anything, over the past few years, we have seen a reduction in demand here because of the economic climate we are in. All the additional food that will be produced here will be sent off the island and we must meet those stringent criteria of our international customers. Much work has been done at national level by the Department in terms of the environmental analysis but a lot of work has also been done by Teagasc and Bord Bia in terms of Origin Green and the carbon navigator tool. I will pass over to Ms O'Shea who will explain how that manifests itself at enterprise level.