Mr. John Muldowney:

Regarding the engagement with the IPCC special report, it is important to recognise that Ireland was pivotal to having the report done. It is one of three special reports that has been done by the IPCC in its sixth assessment cycle. Ireland had a key role in suggesting that it be done, and it was agreed by the IPCC bureau in that regard. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine engages and collaborates very strongly with the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment in how we engage with the IPCC and the UNFCCC and the international meetings on climate change.

We are happy to continue on that.

Some of Dr. Haughey's work would be key to informing some of the gaps and opportunities that exist for Irish research to try to engage and address what sort of enhancements and better understanding we need to do around soil carbon pools, the fluxes that are around that in the changing climate, and how we work to develop better farm practice in terms of trying to protect those soil carbon pools. There is a coherent piece working between the EPA and ourselves and the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment in this space. We will be maintaining this as time goes on to ensure this is well represented.

We are looking forward to having this special report on agriculture and climate discussed at COP 25 in Chile later this year. That is one of the important things we would see. It is also important in the UNFCCC that there is an agenda item on issues relating to agriculture. That will be concluding in COP 26 in the UK next year. This is a work in progress and a number of the workshops that have been going on over the past two years in this space are primarily on some of the actions that are being recommended here around neutral management planning, better afforestation, and line management practice. All the same issues are coming back but the question is how to get greater and quicker uptake of these actions than we have been seeing to date. There is a big piece as to how we engage on the behavioural aspect.