Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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I thank the delegates for their presentation. Will Mr. Lumley expand on the point made about what the fossil fuel car industry did? He appears to be linking it with what is happening in the beef sector. I would appreciate it if he gave me more information on it.

Having heard the presentations made by the representatives of the beef producing sector, we are very concerned about the challenges it is encountering. I am also a member of the Joint Committee on Climate Action and the main message is about a just transition. Our concern is how we can oversee a just transition for people involved in that sector when we are looking at reducing beef consumption by 90%. That will be enormously challenging globally. How is it to be achieved? In any case I cannot envisage it happening in the short term.

On the point made about replacement of the sector by beans and pulses, is Mr. Lumley proposing that those involved transition to that form of agriculture and suggesting there would be enough of a market for them to be able to replace their income? Where would those markets be? Obviously, we would have to have them for ourselves, but where would they be internationally?

In addition, Mr. Lumley spoke about animal feed. If we could produce more of our own, what might it be, apart from grass which is what we have relied on to date?

I am shocked at the amounts of potatoes we import. We are importing 72,000 tonnes of potatoes and 47,000 tonnes of onions. These are staggering figures. Do we have enough land to produce all of these amounts? There is only a certain amount available on the island. Do we have enough soil available to produce what is required? Is it of the standard required to produce vegetables? As somebody who lives in a rural area, I welcome the approach taken in having the family farm at the heart of any transition decision we have to make. We have to be conscious of the role the family farm will play in terms of food security. That is something of which we must be aware if we transition to the production of vegetables as we see the climate continuing to change and extreme weather events occurring. When there were bad summers in the past, we saw acres of vegetables being ploughed back into the ground because they were unable to be harvested. That is another concern.

Mr. Lumley talked about oat milk production. Is he saying we could replace dairy milk with oat milk or is he looking at replacing the milks referred to such as almond and rice milk with oat milk?