Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have four short questions, which I will put together for the Minister. The first is a question on protected geographical indication, PGI. Does the Minister have any update for the House on whether there are any discussions with the European Commission or with the authorities? What is his projected timeline? Does he think it would be applied to a certain category of beef farmers or to all?

The second question relates to the land use plan. We had a discussion on the issue during Question Time with the Minister. Everyone I meet on the academic and policy side says that it is correct to say that we need a land use plan, such is the scale and complexity of the challenge and the interaction between environmental objectives, social objectives and economic objectives that one cannot map where we are going from here unless we have a proper land use plan.

Third, the Minister opened up the organic scheme but I understand it was closed again. Could he give an indication of the demand from beef farmers for entry into the scheme? Does it provide a path for the future, as the farmers in Austria seem to have mastered, whereby they get a high price for a significant percentage of organic dairy and beef produce?

Last but not least, I did not raise it in my speech but in the context of base prices and commodity markets, does the Department have any analysis of the development of artificial beef, in other words, hamburgers made in a lab? The Minister is smiling but from what I am told people say this is game over for the beef industry anyway because of that potential development. I do not know if there is any awareness or recognition that it is coming, pretty much with certainty. If we are not aware of that as a potential input to the debate on the price of beef then we are missing a trick.

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