David Norris (Independent)

Not only is there an end to it, more importantly there is a point to it which relates directly to these amendments. Last week, I flew down to Cork and was driven to the Sacred Heart school in Clonakilty. I saw a number of exciting transition year projects there, but one of them relates directly to this. I felt extraordinary hope in the young people of Ireland when I met a group of young women in their mid-teens. They had isolated a problem concerning the growth of sea lettuce, which is a form of seaweed. In small quantities it is attractive enough in the water. As a result of the excessively rich nutrients from farmland slurry, there is a huge bloom of this form of seaweed around the Cork coast. It lodges on the shoreline and when it becomes heated in the sunshine, it creates an unpleasant odour. These young women isolated the problem, examined it, collected some of the material involved, processed it and compressed it into briquettes. They found that these briquettes burned for twice as long as peat briquettes while giving the same fuel and heat equivalents. I thought that research was stunning and brilliant. Those young people examined a problem and turned it into an advantage.

I am mentioning this example because one of the materials involved is classified as algae and seaweed. Can the Minister indicate if that is correct?