Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State. I have three brief questions and I appreciate the time constraints he is under.

As a reflection on last week's debate, has there been any further work done by the Minister of State's office and his ministerial colleagues on all of those applicants for either farm insulation grants or farm retirement schemes whose applications were being processed but, unfortunately, due to the budgetary announcement, are now suspended? I appreciate that the long-term future of the scheme is, hopefully, secure, but is the plight of the applicants whose projections were based on receiving these grants and who are now left out in the cold being considered? Has any further consideration been given to the extension, beyond the 13 December deadline, of the farm waste management scheme?

I referred in my brief contribution earlier to the ongoing debate on food versus energy and how in one sense it rebalanced almost to an extreme degree. The plans, both within the country and at European Union level, for a significant investment in energy crops appear to have slowed down significantly. Perhaps we had gone too far down that road and had too high a level of expectation. Could we reflect a little further, take note of the energy crop opportunities that are still available and try to get it back on the political agenda?