Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)

Fair play to the Senator. He got to announce that instead of me. That is some going. The news is welcome. Farmers want to play their part in reducing emissions. The bulk of the input into an anaerobic digester is coming from farming and we are getting renewable gas and electricity to power thousands of homes, so I have always felt that those emissions reductions should be attributed to the agricultural sector. That is not the case at the moment but it is something I would love to see. We need to ramp it up. We have far too few anaerobic digesters. When one compares our biomethane production to that of Germany and France, which have hundreds and sometimes thousands of anaerobic digesters, we can see it is a key energy source. Sometimes in Ireland, we are on red alert in terms of energy and electricity and this is because of lack of production of energy. Anaerobic digestion could play a key role in that regard. We are also importing gas, so this could reduce our reliance on international gas.

I commend the Senator on raising the matter.