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

I saw the reports in The Business Postbut I have not read the full briefing documents. The issue of methane is somewhat separate to the energy security issue. It relates primarily to our climate targets and the need to reduce those short-lived greenhouse gases. We are committed within the European Union, in the wider global context, to deliver on that 30% methane reduction. I attended a meeting of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition in COP27 in Egypt. The Climate and Clean Air Coalition is the United Nations body charged with organising and delivering those targets in regard to reducing short-lived greenhouse gases. There was a clear understanding there that the first immediate priority is particularly in the area of fossil methane because the solutions can come very quickly and can actually save a lot of money. The leakage of gas from pipelines and the flaring of gas from the well-head is a huge source of such methane emissions which can be reduced very quickly.

That is the immediate focus. It was agreed there. We are very much involved and we have a member on the board of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. We are very supportive and we are funding the work that is going to be done to show how land-use methane emissions can also be reduced. This is complicated because it includes, for example, rice growing, which would be a major source of methane emissions, and while we could change the practice, we do not want to risk food security.

Ireland will have to reduce its methane from agriculture as well, and that is recognised within our climate plans. I believe it is increasingly recognised within the agriculture sector that we cannot just continue to ignore those rising emissions which we saw last year from agriculture. Methane, as well as nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide from other elements of agriculture, will have to be reduced in line with our overall plan.

See this speech in context