Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

No. Under the Kyoto Protocol, Ireland agreed to limit greenhouse gas emissions to a level of 13% above the level of our emissions in 1990. The EU climate change and energy package has set out a number of targets that ensure Ireland has the highest level of target set under the EU burden sharing arrangements. By 2020, our target is to reduce our national greenhouse gas emissions by 20% compared to 2005 levels. Ireland has also agreed that, again by 2020, 16% of our overall energy consumption will come from renewable sources. Against this backdrop the Government has plenty to work with and it is the reluctance to tackle the issue that is preventing action and nothing else.

I will say a few words about the role of the agricultural sector, which produces some 28% of our greenhouse gases and is in a particularly sensitive position with regard to a climate strategy and set targets for emission reduction. The sector has been subject to much unfair and biased commentary. As Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in July 2010 I set out an ambitious plan for the agrifood sector. Food Harvest 2020 set an ambitious but achievable series of specific targets to drive employment in the agricultural area and to increase our food and beverage exports on an annual basis. As it stands the agrifood sector in Ireland contributes a value of €24 billion to the national economy, generates 6.3% of gross value added and provides over 7.4% of national employment. Agriculture provides 60% of employment within the agrifood sector, which supports over 300,000 jobs across the country. In short, agriculture is the engine of the rural economy and many larger urban centres.

The context of the complex difficulties confronting the agriculture sector is simply the need to produce more food to feed more people. Global demand for food will increase by 70% to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding world population that is projected to increase by 2.1 billion people, from 7 billion today to 9.1 billion by 2050. To give a sense of the scale of this task, the increase is equal to the entire population of the world in 1950.

Adding to the rising demand for food from the increased population is the ongoing task of addressing endemic hunger among vast swathes of the world's population. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United nations estimates that every day over 1 billion people across the globe - one person in seven - do not have enough food to eat or are malnourished. That is a terrible indictment of the global community. According to the IPCC fourth assessment report the increase in demand for food will result in an increase in agricultural emissions worldwide estimated to be of the order of 48% up to 2030. The pressing question is how we can avoid a Malthusian nightmare while meeting our increased food production requirements. In the 19th century the economist Thomas Malthus argued that the rate of population increase would continue to exceed the rate of growth in food production.

Achieving sweeping reductions in national emissions by 80% to 95% while simultaneously maintaining a vibrant productive agriculture sector will be a major challenge but it must be overcome. In the Irish agriculture sector, emissions reductions of such a scale cannot be achieved without downward pressure on livestock activity, which would in turn have negative implication for the world food supply and on worldwide emissions. If we are pursuing the goal of reducing emissions, we cannot taker a short-sighted national approach that ignores the broader international position. Focusing only on our national issues and ignoring the consequences of our decision for the international context will only lead to increased emissions across the globe and defeat the purpose of the whole endeavour. The end result of eroding our own national herd would be a growth in beef imported into the EU, which would be produced in countries with less sustainable farming systems than ours. A decrease in the quantity of Irish-produced beef and the correlating rise in its price would inevitably lead to larger quantities of Mercosur country beef products being imported at cheaper prices but with far greater environmental costs.

Reduced food production in Ireland and the European Union would be taken up elsewhere and result in a heavier carbon footprint, diminishing the prospect of enhanced global food security.

It does not make sense to reduce beef production in Ireland when the sector adheres to demanding cross-compliance criteria and greening targets under the Common Agricultural Policy. Importing greater quantities of beef produced using unsustainable practices in other continents and shipping them halfway across the globe to reach our market would substantially increase the carbon footprint.

This does not mean abandoning any hope of greater carbon efficiencies in the agricultural sector. Substantial progress has been made in the farming and agrifood sector in reducing emissions through better farming techniques and improved animal husbandry. The substantial level of investment in innovation, research and development in farming and the agrifood sector in the period from 2000 to 2011 has assisted considerably in the development of new techniques and the work being done on farming and processing in a smarter and more environmentally friendly manner.

In 2009, Ireland become one of the first countries to join the Global Research Alliance which is committed to the mitigation of greenhouse gases in the agriculture sector. As founding members of the initiative, Ireland and New Zealand are among its leaders. Members of the alliance aim to deepen and broaden mitigation research efforts across the agricultural subsectors of rice, cropping and livestock and the cross-cutting themes of soil carbon and nitrogen cycling and inventories and measurement issues. As Deputy Catherine Murphy noted, carbon sequestration and carbon sinks are key areas that must be factored in to legislation.

A number of groups established to address these areas of work have developed work plans that bring countries and other partners together in research collaborations and to share knowledge and best practices, build capacity and capability among scientists and other practitioners, specifically those involved in primary production and others involved further up the processing process, and move towards breakthrough solutions in addressing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Besides this enterprising international work, much is being done on the domestic front and the various farm environmental schemes have been important in this regard. As I noted, the cross-compliance criteria in the EU funded farm schemes that support the agricultural sector place specific demands on the sector and support environmentally friendly practices which are at the heart of farms in every parish.

I also acknowledge the work done on this issue by the Ceann Comhairle when he was Chairman of the Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security in the previous Dáil. I recall meeting the joint committee as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the previous Government.

Fostering research and innovation to develop new and exciting strategies to reduce emissions must be a central part of the overall strategy to tackle climate change. We must utilise human ingenuity to develop new ways and ideas to reduce the emissions of agriculture. Our climate change strategy should harness the deep potential of humans to innovate to address pressing problems. It is time to stand up to the demands of climate change, make the most of our resources, set out a clear framework to meet our targets and incentivise innovation in addressing the challenges it generates. I welcome this Bill as a step towards achieving these goals and meeting the obligations we have to the future generations who will share this planet. I hope the Bill will proceed to Committee Stage as my party would like to introduce several amendments that will be crucial to enhancing this important legislative work.

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