Mr. Paul Kelly:

With regard to food security, the projections for the global population are an increase of between 7 billion and 9 billion and, therefore, there is an apparent hugely increased food requirement. There is increasing consumption of nutritionally valuable dairy and meat products. That will increase as people get more protein into their diets. This needs to be examined at the very minimum on a European level, if not on an international level. Using targets from an Irish perspective disadvantages production in Ireland and, as I outlined generally and Ms O'Shea did specifically, the production methods in this State are highly sustainable. All that will be happen is production will move to more unsustainable parts of the world. In some respects, a similar analogy can be made with the concept of carbon leakage, which is provided for under the emissions trading scheme. That is very much looked at in an economic sense in that certain industries can be restricted in Europe as a result of emissions trading and move offshore out of Europe, which is effectively carbon leakage. The same will happen here in some respects, the difference being from a sustainability perspective, food production will move to other pars of the world where it will be done in a more unsustainable fashion. Ireland is the right place to do it.