Mr. Trevor Donnellan:

The Deputy is not the first person to make that observation about its bleakness. This is an unfortunate reality in terms of some of the projections we have produced from an economic perspective.

The issue at present is that the dairy sector has expanded quite rapidly over recent years and the extent of that expansion over a five or six-year period is never going to be repeated. We are never going to have the percentage increase in the size of the dairy sector ever again, in my view. That was the handbrake coming off and the engine running at full revs. The situation we have seen in recent years is that emissions are going up in aggregate, and emissions efficiency is improving. The carbon footprint per unit of product is actually improving, but at a lower rate than the growth in the total amount of what is being produced. That is why the emissions continue to go up, and not because nobody cares or nobody is doing anything. It is more on the basis that we are producing more. There is a global requirement to produce more food. The issue ultimately that we have to understand in some sense the extent to which Ireland is going to contribute to meeting the increase in global food demand. Global food demand in terms of growth is very high. My expectation is that the percentage increase in production in a developed country like Ireland is not going to match the level of growth internationally. Developed countries themselves will probably have to service some of that growth.

We are somewhat unique in Europe in the sense of our agriculture sector producing more output, and significantly more so in the case of dairy production over recent years. No other country in Europe has done something like that. We are different. Whether it is a good different or a bad different is a question for policymakers to decide because the development that has happened in the dairy sector has been quite valuable from an economic perspective. It is not desirable from a greenhouse gas emissions perspective, but as politicians know very well, there are multiple objectives that we are trying to achieve across the economy. It is not all about greenhouse gas mitigation or economic growth in the agriculture sector. There has to be a medium found that balances those different objectives.