Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. I have now have asked the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance, and the Minister with responsibility for climate action the same question on the operation of Bord na Móna with regard to the pandemic unemployment payment and the wage subsidy scheme. I was promised by the other two members of Cabinet that I would get a specific response but I am still waiting for that.

I have two further questions which I will ask together as my time is limited. As the Minister knows, a substantial amount of work had been done within the Department on the clean air strategy. When I was Minister we enhanced the ambient air quality monitoring programme across the country. Building on that, there is a clear recognition that air pollution has a greater impact on health at lower levels than had been previously understood. The Government was looking to prioritise the clean air strategy and in doing so have a direct impact on our overall emissions. When will the clean air strategy be published?

I wish to raise the issue of food waste with the Minister.

To date, the focus of the discussion on agriculture and climate change has been about beef production. In global terms the focus has been on energy generation and how we chose to travel or heat our homes. What we eat, however, has a substantial climate impact. The carbon footprint of wasted food is estimated at 3.3 gigatonnes per annum. More than one third of all food is wasted. It is not just food itself that goes to waste, but it is also all the resources that went into making it from the water to the land to the labour. If food waste was a country it would rank only behind the United States of America and China for greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, 23% of food waste volume happens at production level, 12% happens at storage and handling, 5% at processing level, 9% at distribution and marketing, and 52% of food waste volume occurs at consumption level. Irish agriculture is already taking the lead with a number of agricultural measures to improve efficiency in our agrifood sector to reduce our carbon intensity. Will the Government build on this to become the global leader in tackling food waste from production right through to the use of food and agricultural waste with in townscale biogas production?

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