Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Senator Pippa Hackett):

My Department has committed to the development of an enabling framework, which can potentially reward farmers and landowners partaking in emissions mitigation and carbon removal activities. However, we are awaiting direction from Europe on this. On 20 February 2024, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU reached a provisional agreement on the carbon removals and carbon farming, CRCF, regulation, establishing the first EU-wide voluntary framework for certifying carbon removals, carbon farming and carbon storage in products generated in Europe. The European Parliament voted to approve the draft CRCF regulation on 10 April 2024. The final legal text must now be formally adopted by Council before being published in the Official Journal of the European Union and entering into force.

Discussions will continue on the implementation. The Commission intends to adopt the first set of certification methodologies within one year from the entry into force of the CRCF regulation.

My Department will continue to monitor developments closely to guide and inform Ireland's policy direction on carbon farming.

In tandem with developments at the EU level, there is a commitment to develop a national framework for carbon farming here. In September 2023, my Department held a public consultation on carbon farming, and positive feedback was received from stakeholders regarding the opportunity to diversify farm incomes. Stakeholders were supportive of an approach that included carbon removal, greenhouse gas reductions and biodiversity measures in a national carbon farming framework. Furthermore, stakeholders considered it important that the framework supports and compliments the environmental measures within the Common Agricultural Policy strategic plan.

In parallel with the public consultation, a carbon farming working group was established to oversee the development of the framework. Nationally, there are knowledge and data gaps - we are aware of those - that will need to be bridged to support carbon farming. In response, a number of key research and demonstration activities have been identified and funded in this regard.

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