Mr. Barry Caslin:

I will start off with the question on food security and the use of the digestate. Dr. Thorne or Professor Dillon might want to come in on food security. Regarding food security, I often get asked this question. We export over 90% of our beef and dairy products. We import about 60% of our energy. When the Corrib oilfield dries up, which is expected over the next eight to ten years, we will be importing over 90% of our energy. There is a balance to be found in terms of our use and AD is one of those. The target of 5.7 TWh will mean 10% of our annual fossil fuel gas being displaced in this country. There will be other technologies. I always say a jigsaw of technologies will be needed for us to meet our targets. It will be a combination of wind and solar, technologies supplying intermittent energy, along with AD and biomass boilers. A combination of all these technologies will be required in the future.

We certainly need to be looking at AD as one technology. We are talking about 3% to 4% of the grassland area of Ireland being dedicated to AD plants. It is not a lot of grassland and it would not displace current food production. There are a lot of what we call hidden hectares where land is underutilised and not farmed to its full potential. We could add digestate to pastures that are there at the moment without upgrading or ploughing them, which could potentially emit carbon, and increase the yields to optimise it, possibly involving the addition of lime. The addition of digestate also raises the pH of those soils because it has a pH of around 8. The addition of digestate onto agricultural land is a valuable nutrient, in terms of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, but also in terms of raising the pH of those soils.

In terms of food security, I would be saying we need to look at our land base, while not affecting food production by using that 3% of the land.