Ms Sadhbh O'Neill:

I thank Deputy Whitmore for an excellent question. I will highlight the fact that in 2019, the Climate Change Advisory Council produced a special report on agriculture, which is a really excellent read. It discusses many of the issues regarding metrics, details and the drivers eloquently, clearly and succinctly. It identified five key drivers for emissions in Ireland. It is worth recapping them, namely, an increase in global demand for dairy and beef products; abolition of the milk quota; the agrifood strategies, Food Harvest 2020 and Food Wise 2025; beef sector supports such as the beef environmental efficiency programme-suckler, BEEP-S, mechanisms; and target agriculture modernisation schemes, TAMS, that is, support for capital investment, which has greatly encouraged dairy intensification.

If we are going to do anything about mitigation, we need to first of all look at what is driving the problem. This is clearly the place to start. We cannot do much about global demand except possibly divesting ourselves of the responsibility of producing food to feed the world, because that is a nonsense. We should not have to do that. We should also recognise that, globally speaking, the focus on beef and dairy is driving species to extinction. It is using far too much land and is not going to support the nutritional needs of a growing world population. Ireland should not be jumping on this bandwagon in a desire to support our farmers. We have to provide an alternative model consistent with meeting the human development needs of a growing population.

The milk quota was a major driver in Ireland but, unlike other EU countries, we used it as an opportunity to expand dairy production. We did not need to do that because the trends were moving in a positive direction prior to this and emissions from agriculture were coming down steadily until 2011, when they started to increase again. The first port of call is to make sure that any future agrifood strategy, and comments for a current draft of a strategic environmental assessment are closing today, has to be consistent with meeting our climate and biodiversity obligations by 2030. If we pass or adopt another agrifood strategy that even suggests a modest decrease in methane emissions, we will be failing. That is a failure. It is a recipe for disaster and we will be asking ourselves again in five years' time, how did it happen and how did it come about that agricultural emissions are going up?

If we want to communicate to farmers what a just transition looks like, the first thing we need to do is get our house in order on the policy side. We need to provide an articulated, clear, policy framework that is consistent between the Department of the Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the climate action agenda. The regulatory context in which that is going to unfold, if the climate Bill is passed, will be extremely tight. There will be consequences if emissions targets are not met. We need to have a look at those supports, whether they are fossil fuel subsidies or any form of subsidy that is giving the wrong incentive, whether in the beef sector or in dairy capital investment programmes. They need to be looked at again. We need to stop incentivising the bad and to start incentivising the good, including eco-schemes and providing additional supports where that is appropriate.

We need to do something on the market side, because if food prices do not reflect the environmental costs, we are on a hiding to nothing and farmers will wonder why they are being asked to do something that is completely uneconomic. We need to address the bigger picture of market failure. The role of intermediaries, like supermarkets, is critically important in Ireland because supermarkets and wholesalers have a very strong level of control over the standards of food production from their suppliers. I do not know if that adequately addresses the Deputy's question, but if there if any further detail I will be happy to provide it.