Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

I am aware that advances in life sciences and industrial biotechnology are breaking new ground in understanding microbial biodiversity and bioprocesses that could lead to valuable bioproduct and biomaterials like plastic materials and chemical agents being produced from agricultural crops. Support for such research which, I believe, should be very much led by industry comes within the remit of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

The interest of the Department of Agriculture and Food in this general area lies in the potential for farm production in developing alternative uses for crops. The creation of new markets via non-traditional uses of crops is particularly topical at the moment. To that end the Department of Agriculture and Food has provided considerable research funding via the public good competitive research programme, namely, the research stimulus fund.

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