Mr. Ian Lumley:

Some members referred to the major conflict, which is quite obvious, between the ongoing annual climate negotiations that take place at UN level, including meeting the Paris Agreement targets and the ongoing global trade agreements, specifically the Mercosur negotiations that could potentially result in higher carbon impact beef products coming in to the EU from South America among other concerns. If we are to have effective climate action at global level, it will have to be integrated with targets that meet the Paris Agreement, and trade agreements must reflect that. This was a major issue at the Bonn climate summit last November. In his speech President Macron raised a very important signal that if there was a conflict between meeting global climate targets and countries that were able, through trade agreements, to export products that undermined the climate targets then there would have to be a reconciliation of that conflict with carbon taxation or some other mechanism or agreement. We have to start thinking of accounting for pricing and disincentivising higher carbon impact actions, in energy as much as in food, and incentivising decarbonisation.

This opportunity can now be realised at European level through the negotiations taking place on the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. European agricultural policy resulted in the removal of milk quotas under the previous CAP round. This has caused problems with respect to climate action and emissions. In Ireland and across Europe, major issues include continuing biodiversity loss and water quality. The Netherlands is facing major legal pressures on nitrates and water quality, potentially resulting in significant destocking, some of which has already occurred. The negotiations on CAP present an opportunity to make climate action a centrepiece of future European agricultural policy and subsidy support, with a switch to supporting more plant-based and locally-based food, enhancing biodiversity and water quality, controlling nitrates and addressing problems with ammonia emissions.

In Ireland, substantial resources have been devoted to researching and promoting grassland agriculture to the exclusion of other sectors. A redirection of targeted, area-based pilot schemes is required towards better quality tillage, plant-based food and potential energy crops. There are lessons to be learned from what happened when miscanthus was incentivised without a proper support system for the crop being put in place. My colleague, Mr. Ewing, will discuss the potential for high-value nature farming which could result in a significant rebooting of the CAP figures to favour those parts of the country that have lower support for farm incomes.

We must also take a realistic approach to the concept of offsetting, which has limited potential for forestry and bioenergy. We must ensure that support mechanisms in forestry and bioenergy are compatible with the concerns of local communities. The concerns raised by Deputy Martin Kenny regarding County Leitrim, for example, are widely recognised as a consequence of the current system of subsidies.

Major issues arise with regard to Origin Green, a branding and labelling system that could cause serious reputational damage to Ireland when reconciled with the reality of our rising climate emissions and the difficulties we will experience meeting nitrates and water quality targets as a result of increasing stocking levels. The problem applies not only to the bovine sector, but also in horticulture, including the extraction of peat for horticultural use.

On marine issues, there is serious unpredictability in respect of the impact of warming oceans and ocean acidification on the marine ocean feeding chain. We should not take comfort from projections showing that warming oceans will result in species migrating from our waters to the north as waters warm and species from further south migrating in our direction. Species change and migration may not be reconciled with the maintenance of marine feeding systems.

There are also serious worries that new forms of exploitation of the marine ecosystem for marine protein could further cut into and endanger the stability of the marine ecosystem. These include the pursuit of deeper fish such as boarfish and blue whiting, as has been proposed in Deputy Pringle's constituency. Marine life, including marine organisms and marine fish species, sequester carbon. We need to be careful, therefore, about the ecological and carbon balance within the marine ecosystem if we are to maintain its stability.

The potential for offseting methane in bovine agriculture through the use of marine protein is still very much at the research stage. If this idea were to proceed further, the environmental impact of the scale of potential extraction of marine protein that might arise would need to be quantified as the issue has not yet been addressed. There is also serious ecological conflict and capacity issues with Irish aquaculture in our coastal waters, including with regard to the sustainability of finfish farming given the ecological footprint of the marine feeding of farmed fish relative to output.