Mr. Noel Gavigan:

I am quite in support of the previous speaker in terms of agriculture as it stands in Ireland. Our units of production are one of the lowest in Europe for carbon emissions in both beef and dairy terms. I do not see anything but advantage to using biogas to deal with waste materials that are currently being produced and it provides a much more economical and efficient way of recycling those. Also, a vast quantity of the material we are looking at using is waste material collected from everyone's house. This is brown bin waste and food waste. Although there are lots of strategies to reduce food waste and they have been ongoing for over a decade and there was involvement up to 15 years ago, it is still being produced. We are going to see some reduction in that, we think, but it is not something we are going to see eliminated by any means. There is always going to be brown bin waste.

We need to have an efficient and environmentally friendly way of not just dealing with that waste, but also recycling those nutrients, which are valuable now, if we are to have a true circular economy. That material will be in place.

We want to improve efficiency in the overall economy and reducing demand for gas and all other forms of energy is something that we are all trying to do. Energy prices have increased to a high level over the past while and will remain at that level for some time. Any approach that we can make to reducing demand is being taken, but we still need to replace that energy with low-carbon sources.