Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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It will be. There is a danger that we might transfer our policy of growing forestry to otherwise productive agricultural land. Trees would grow there more quickly, but this would reduce space for growing food and we would not be able to transfer the land back in one year's time or ten years' time. We will not be able to recover it because land does not work that way. We may find ourselves disadvantaged. I accept Ms Donnelly's point about New Zealand. I have not examined the figures recently and I do not know the extent to which New Zealand has made inroads into reducing its emissions, but either we are all in this together or we will fail. If we have to tell our people that they have to make more sacrifices and import more carbon from the rest of the world to feed themselves, it will not sit too well with them, especially given that we are a country whose food production punches above its weight.