Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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208. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he has assessed the potential impacts that the European Commission’s 2030 Climate Target Plan will have on Irish agriculture; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40697/20]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The European Green Deal is a set of policy initiatives by the European Commission with the overarching aim of making Europe climate neutral in 2050. The President of the European Commission has made the European Green Deal a priority for her mandate from the start and it includes raising the EU's ambition on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to at least 55% below 1990 levels by 2030 and is in line with the Paris Agreement objective to keep the global temperature increase to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to keep it to 1.5°C.

The Commission’s focus is on overhauling relevant climate and energy legislation to align with the newly proposed target to reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030, as compared to 1990 levels. The 'step-up' in ambition at national level will be subject to agreement through a revision to the 'Effort Sharing regulation' which will not be concluded until the middle of 2021.

At national level, it is not yet clear what this will mean for individual sectors. However, it is clear that, as a result of the Green Deal and the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies, there is an increasing focus on achieving positive environmental outcomes in Agriculture.

Ireland's farmers are well placed to deliver on this objective giver our reputation as a source of high quality food produced to the highest environmental standards. Farmers can also embrace these changes in the knowledge that much of what is being asked of them can contribute to improving overall farm profitability, and that there are strong synergies between environmental performance and market dynamics .