Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator McGreehan for the passion with which she delivered her opening speech on farms having a balance sheet of carbon sequestration. I have learned a lot in the past four minutes.

At the outset, it is the responsibility of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, to report emissions and removals associated with land use activities on an annual basis to the EU and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC. However, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is working with the EPA to improve reporting of the agriculture and the land use, land use change and forestry, LULUCF, inventory.

Carbon farming is an essential component of strategies to mitigate climate change and meet our climate targets by reducing emissions and increasing carbon removal from the atmosphere. As Senator McGreehan says, it is therefore critical that this is underpinned by a well-functioning national carbon farming framework that provides confidence, verification, and certification to generate a potential additional income source for farmers in the actions they take to remove and store carbon in soils, forests, grasslands, croplands, and hedgerows.

In November 2022, the European Commission published a proposal on the certification of carbon removals to boost removal technologies and sustainable farming solutions, which underpins the European Green Deal and sets out rules for the independent verification of carbon removals and certification schemes to create a viable carbon farming market.

On 26 September, the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, launched a public consultation to guide the development of a national carbon farming framework, which will be customised to an Irish context, complements the environmental activity within the CAP Strategic Plan 2023-2027 and that is cognisant of the trajectory and requirements at EU level.

In addition, the Department has been developing and supporting initiatives to gather national baseline data on a range of activities.To date, we have provided for the establishment of the national agricultural soil carbon observatory and the national soil sampling programme along with a range of research projects on peat soils. An example is the RePEAT project working to accurately identify the extent of organic soils under agricultural management while investment in European innovation projects in the midlands is developing a results-based agri-environmental model to reward farmers for implementing sustainable management practices on peat soils.

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is collaborating with the EPA, Teagasc and other research institutions in a range of research projects to better understand the capacity of Irish soils to sequester carbon in different types of grassland or on different individual farms. It is challenging given the different soil types, crops, climatic conditions and land use to accurately measure carbon sequestration emissions as well as proving the additionality and permanence of carbon sequestration.

The Minister has provided funding for the formation of a nationwide network of best practice demonstration and research farms under the Teagasc Signpost programme. The Signpost programme is a collaborative partnership of farmers, industry and State agencies working together to lead climate action and the transition towards more sustainable farming systems.