Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 3 May 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Biomethane Renewable Gas: Discussion

Mr. J.P. Prendergast:

Because we are last to the game here in Ireland, we have an opportunity to utilise and learn from other countries. Much of the work we are doing in Brussels at the moment, show that benefits from biodiversity, leachate from farms and slurry going on rivers has a major impact. This is providing a solution on top of the solutions here. With digestate, they are looking at horticulture as an additional industry on top of that digestate for high-value product so we have the circular economy that extends out. We are quite lucky that some of the work that we have done in the Renewable Gas Forum Ireland is that charter is to learn from the mistakes that have been made because community acceptance will be huge, location will be very important and in fairness to the work that is going on with DG GROW and the work we are doing over in Europe at the moment, acceptance is very important. Knowledge within communities and in these sectors is key to understanding for local authorities, planning and so on. We are probably lucky we are last to the table here because we can learn from it.