Mr. Tim Cullinan:

We need to be realistic here as well. We have a population of 5 million people give or take in Ireland. We have to look at the amount of waste being produced and possibly still going to landfill. That is one area. That will not fuel biogas plants across the country so there is a limited amount of waste that would be available and then you move on to animal manure. Again, there is a limited amount of that. We have a wind strategy and solar. As regards generating electricity, we are far better off working on that strategy. With anaerobic digestion, we need to look at biomethane and generating. There are two areas where this would be very beneficial. Number one is transport fuel while the other is in heating. We need to draw a line there. This is the way we need to go because it comes back to where it was discussed earlier. If we are using anaerobic digestion to generate electricity, 50% of your output is going to go in heat. If you are trying to transfer that heat from rural Ireland to a local town or village, you will have a massive loss. This is very important.

The Deputy mentioned livestock farmers moving from livestock to producing bio-gas. That would be a massive change in policy. Looking at the world today where food security is very important, we are one of the most efficient countries in the world at doing that. We can have a balance here. There is a role for all of this but we are excellent at producing food in Ireland. Regarding emissions, it is very important to remind ourselves of the excellent work done by Teagasc that clearly demonstrates that bovines grazing grass in one of the few countries in the world that does this - we along with New Zealand are top class at doing this - produce up to 30% less methane. That work is ongoing and it is very important that we keep a very close eye on that.