Ms Chris Allen:

I think it is. There is an awful lot of interest in this area. In 2019, Hemp Federation Ireland did a kind of outreach project and we travelled all around the country. We were in small places in Galway and all over the country. We were in packed rooms and having to look for chairs to accommodate people who had travelled the length and breadth of the country because they are interested in this crop. They understand the environmental benefits of the sector. The State and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine need to understand that those environmental benefits must be fully integrated. There are too many of them not to do that. For example, Ireland's land currently emits CO2. We have some CO2 storage in our forests but because of the degradation of our forests, that CO2 will be gone. It will not be there anymore by 2030. Trees we plant today, for example, will not start to sequester carbon until well into the 2030s.