Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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74. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the speed with which the framework to support carbon farming will be put in place in Ireland; and the countries that are the best international exemplars in this respect. [38221/22]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I know that a framework to support carbon farming needs to be put in place as quickly as possible and we plan on becoming a world leader in this area.

The Deputy will be aware that there are knowledge and data gaps that will need to be bridged to facilitate carbon farming and that is why I have identified and funded a number of key research and demonstration activities which will not only influence our policy direction in the coming years but will also help to provide baseline information on key activities within the agricultural and land use sectors.

In research, we are currently supporting data gathering activities such as the National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory (NASCO) infrastructure, the Pilot Soil Sampling Programme and the Farm Environmental Study (FES), while also providing funding to European Innovation Projects such as the Farm Carbon EIP and FarmPEAT EIP which will provide specific information not only on the baseline data but also on how we can influence land use management change in these areas.

In demonstration our recently launched country wide network of Teagasc supported Signpost Farms will showcase how best practice management techniques can be adopted on a wide range of enterprises and soil types.

These research and demonstration activities along with the recent establishment of the Carbon Farming Working Group, chaired through DAFM, will allow us to address a number of requirements around carbon farming mainly in the areas of establishing baseline data, auditing, governance and address the need for the Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of carbon removals/reductions.

Within this ongoing work we are indeed monitoring developments in other Member States such as France and the Netherlands, which can provide useful learnings in this area.