Mr. Declan Murray:

The first thing to talk about is the classification of slurry. We do not have a classification for digestate in this country. This leads to a problem because the inputs going into the digestate are certified individually. In Europe, however, whatever goes into the plant is tested, conforms to a standard and then becomes a digestate at its back end. There is a problem with the EPA's understanding of what slurry is being used for once it is exported from the farm. We are a small, new and growing industry and this was not the case in the past. It is my understanding that the original classification of slurry as waste if it left the farm was to prevent too much intermingling of slurries between farms but that has now become less of an issue with anaerobic digesters, whereby one can use the available capacity, we can get a benefit from it and the farmer gets a benefit from it too.

That leads me on to the Cathaoirleach's second question. In terms of digestate, the different types of feedstock put into a plant will have an overall effect on the proportion of nutrients that are in the fertiliser that comes out the back end. That is handled every year by each plant testing its digestate to understand how much nutrients there are in it and in what quantities.. We then do a nutrient management plan for the farmer to provide only the amount required to grow the crop, as specified in the plan. Mr. Macken can talk about his experience with moving away entirely from chemical fertilisers over to organic digestate.