Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

First, in response to Deputy Naughten, the key basis and platform on which we can monetise carbon sequestration and pay farmers for it is by having the measurement tools in place. I am giving significant funding to Teagasc to develop that. With regard to carbon tax replacing direct Exchequer funding, that is certainly not the case. A concern that has been raised over the last year or so by farmers is that they did not want to see it replacing direct Exchequer funding. The massive package I delivered yesterday is an increase, before carbon tax is included, on what was available in the last CAP programme in national co-funding. Indeed, the carbon tax on top of that represents a 60:40 ratio, whereby 60% of Pillar 2 will now be State funded versus 40% coming from Europe. The outgoing CAP was 47% from the State and 53% from Europe. It is additional, therefore, and is seriously delivering income directly to farm families.

Deputy McNamara asked about the measurement of it. Obviously, that will be clarified as part of the climate action plan. The key principle and objective at all times is ensuring that we can continue to produce the food we currently produce while driving down the emissions footprint of its production. That is the bottom line, in my view, with regard to setting feasible targets.

Deputy Carthy spoke about farm-by-farm measurement. The soil sampling scheme that I launched a few weeks ago is doing that farm-by-farm in terms of assessing what the benchmark is in each farm to enable farmers to see their current position and so they can build on and develop that in the years ahead.

See this speech in context