Dr. Frank O'Mara:

I will try to sweep up some of those issues. Deputy Pringle asked whether we were undertaking enough work on climate change and greenhouse gas. Our research has given us the technologies to allow us to create a plan to meet our targets without a cut in the national herd. It has been a successful research programme. It would have been great if we had had more money to spend on it, but we had what we had. The immediate challenge is in implementing the measures and achieving the reduction. Deputies Cahill and Fitzmaurice mentioned the lambasting of agriculture and farmers over this issue. The most powerful response that could be made is to reduce emissions from agriculture, which I hope will happen soon. It will be a great headline when that happens, as it has been going in the other direction for the past number of years.

Senator Daly asked about the green deal. The challenge for research is to go beyond the MACC. We have a certain level of technology developed and can achieve a certain level of mitigation, but if we are to participate in the green deal, we will have to go beyond the MACC. There is a great deal of research into developing new technologies around fertiliser, methane mitigation and sequestration, be that in grassland, hedgerows or wherever. Sequestration will have to form a part of agriculture's participation in a zero carbon future.

Regarding veganism, and as Professor Boyle stated, we are clear on the nutritional benefits of meat and dairy products. At particular stages, they are almost indispensable for certain cohorts of people. However, we are not public health experts and are not in a position to give dietary advice. We came upon an interesting piece of data recently. We have access to the national statistics on what people eat. A survey was carried out. Our research has divided it up into three cohorts: the people who have a good few jars and then a burger and chips on the way home, which is not a healthy diet, but we all have a stage of life where we do a little of that; the people who try to follow good nutritional advice; and the more traditional "meat and two veg" people. Surprisingly, the carbon footprints of the last two diets were the same. Obviously, those who follow good nutritional advice are not all vegans. Rather, they are people who are conscious of having a low meat and dairy intake. When everything they eat has its carbon footprint measured, though, it is no different than the diet of those who like their meat, dairy, potato and vegetable products. It is a complex debate. The people with the unhealthy diet had a much higher carbon footprint. It is bad for themselves and the environment. When what people eat is counted, however, moving towards a vegan-type diet might not be the solution. It is a nuanced debate. The good news story for agriculture will be when we see a headline about agricultural emissions falling 5% or whatever it might be.

Professor Boyle has addressed the calf issue, but it has been stated a couple of times that we did not think of the calves. What my colleague, Dr. Pat Dillon, actually said was that he had been part of the dairy activation group, which was set up around the time that Food Harvest 2020 was being dreamed up ten years ago. The group was considering what would need to happen on the ground, given the potential for an increase in milk production thanks to quotas going. The type of questions that came to the fore were, for example, where would the necessary cows, land, processing capacity and labour be found? He was saying that the increase in the number of calves was not flagged in that mix of priority issues. Hindsight is always 20:20, but it was not envisaged as an issue ten years ago. That is not to say that we have not been well aware in the past couple of years of the issue of the growing number of dairy calves and the changing dynamic in the farming community, that is, there are fewer farmers interested in rearing calves than there were 30 years ago when we had many more dairy cows. We have been working on the dairy beef index, which will help dairy farmers to select bulls to breed better calves after they finish with their replacement breeding. This has to be a major part of the solution.

Sex semen, which was mentioned earlier, is another part of the solution. We see that going beyond the Jerseys because the problem cohort of calves are the male calves born when a farmer is trying to breed replacements. The more we can reduce the number of those, the less of a problem we will have. It is certainly not only an issue with Jerseys. Of the approximate 200,000 calves exported this year, the majority were black and white. We have to think about the long term as well and how are we going to be able to rear those calves for a good future in Ireland. Live exports may not last forever.

This is a complex problem and the solution is not as simple as just a change in the EBI or anything like that. That in itself is a complex issue because the EBI is not just a group of people sitting around a table dreaming up ideas for more of this or that. An economic model is involved in putting weightings on things in the EBI, so we advise care in meddling with something that has been successful for dairy farmers for the past 20 years. We should stick to the principles of science in setting the weightings on the EBI. I am not stating that the EBI is not part of the solution, but there are other ways. I refer to sex semen and the dairy beef index that will turn around the problem much faster than can be achieved via the EBI.

Regarding those calves, we started a new research project at Grange. It involves a new self-contained herd of dairy beef calves. We are rearing three groups - Angus, high EBI Holsteins and low EBI Holsteins. The first results are coming in now - we do not have them yet - and that project will be ongoing for the next couple of years. The results will be very interesting. For me, the one thing that will come out of it is that management trumps all. If a farmer has a good calf but rears it badly, he or she is still going to lose money, while a farmer with a bad calf who rears it well will have a chance of making money. That aspect should not be lost in the story either.

The biggest contribution we can make is via advice and research on how to get the best performance out of calves on the farm, whatever type of calves they might be. The current issue regarding dairy calves is more a beef price issue than a dairy calf issue. If the price of beef was €4 or €4.50, then there would be no problem selling all the calves born in the country. The problem is we have a major profitability problem for every beef animal. For a suckler farmer, the calves are arriving and there is not much that can be done about that. They are coming-----