Mr. Charles Stanley-Smith:

We are not giving dietary advice. We tell students to look at the climate change impact of the food that they eat. A discussion will start within the class with the teacher. That is what it is all about. We will not apologise for giving climate change advice about looking at the different types of food that people eat.

Earlier, a lot was said that we would agree with about the difficulties of farmers. As I said, I live in a rural area. The difficulties include cattle prices, retailers, factories, consumer protection, lack of competition and the Mercosur deal. We are fully aware of all these things and feel that the members of the agricultural groups would be better off fighting for their members, for better prices, against the retailers, factories and so on rather than getting themselves upset about the fact that we are telling students to think about what they eat. As Mr. Lumley said, there are many problems and we understand them. We would fight the Mercosur deal for other reasons as well as the beef issue. We are fully supportive of solar panels and so on. That is a problem with the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government which it has to deal with. We support CAP reform and more environmental protection. We understand the problems. We are not and never have been against the agriculture and beef industry. This is said about us and it is said that we object to everything. We have made 70 planning appeals around the country in the last year. We are not making objections and appeals in every single parish despite what has been said that An Taisce is against everything. An Taisce is not against everything. It has a valid reason for those appeals, which are small in number. The idea of CAP reform and more environmental protection within it is definitely worth getting behind.

I would like to address a matter related to the GLEAM report, which Mr. Healy talked about. People who talk about the GLEAM report are slightly wrong in that there is no GLEAM report. GLEAM is an online tool produced by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. One accesses it and submits parameters which one wants to know about, such as beef cattle, selects the country which one wants the information for, and then gets an answer. One has to go into this and repeat the test each time for all 28 countries in the EU. It is a similar test each time. Just the country is changed. It is done on a comparable basis between one country and the next.

in the past few years I fought with the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht on the protection of hedgerows.

We have been to the forefront of protecting hedgerows and such and absolutely understand the sequestration of hedgerows.

This is difficult and nobody is saying it is easy. The targets that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, sets out will be incredibly difficult to achieve all round the world. The one thing about talking about whether it is here or there is that the planet does not care where greenhouse gases come from. It is our moral duty to do as much in Ireland as we can, as every country should. We are not trying to preserve our way of life but the way of life of the world. That is why future generations and young people are so upset. They believe, and I concur, that my generation and other slightly younger generations are really not doing enough for them and their futures.