Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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I thank Mr. Savage for coming in today and for his presentation, which was really interesting. I could not agree more with him when it comes to measuring metrics and making sure the right information is being used to inform decisions, and about incentivising farmers to do the right thing. That is an area in which we certainly have not been doing work over many years.

I have a couple of questions, the first of which is with regard to the system he was talking about. He said it is monitoring at an animal level. Is it monitoring at an animal level for the purpose of real-time reductions in emissions from particular cows or for the purposes of breeding future animals that will have lower reductions? Is it a bit of both? How long would that process take? My second question relates to the metrics. To be fair, Mr. Savage was asked to look at the efforts to reduce emissions but if we look at farming from an Irish context, it seems not to work for the environment or the farmer at the moment. If we just look at it very much from an emissions perspective, yes, then maybe just reducing animal emissions is the metric we would look at. However, surely we should look at it more broadly. There is river pollution, biodiversity loss and a continued intensification of the industry for people, which means there are lower incomes and more stress for farmers. It is really not working for farmers. Should we include metrics that are not just emissions but also look at farmers' lives, their incomes and the future of farming and maybe broaden them to use this as an opportunity to reform farming so that it works for farmers, the environment, the country, food security and all those things? Those are my two questions.