Pat O'Toole

We're more than halfway between the base year of 2018 and the target year of 2030 that you referred to in relation to most countries.

of the targets that are there.

We're way off base.

The latest results from the EPA show that this year, especially in terms of the troubled issue of land use, land use change and forestry, because of the age profile of our forests, we're actually going backwards in that one.

We're putting more carbon back into the atmosphere than we're taking out of it through our forestation as we harvest.

Well, you'd say it's going to go up, but there are troubling trends there around.

I mean, cattle farming is not going through a good year.

And certainly what we can say for sure, Philip, is that there's more and more pressure on farmers to get extra land.

But the ability to pay is a problem.

And we're seeing Declan O'Brien had a revealing story in this week's paper in the Farmers Journal where more and more of the money that is going to support afforestation is going to non-farmers.

So farmers are no longer able to buy land against other interests because land is an attractive investment option.

Because of the very pressures on land use that are there, people realise that owning land in the future may be something that gives you leverage and power.

Absolutely.

There's no other business that sees people as asset rich and cash poor anymore.

So that's absolutely the case.

And the reality is that if you buy an acre of land and farm it, you're paying tax on the first euro you earn.

Whereas if you buy an acre of land and using the system that's there, you rent it out.

you benefit from the tax release there for leasing of land, which was meant to be for generational renewal.

But actually, it's now become probably something that's counterproductive.

Yes and no, because the famous story of Solomon and the baby, where King Solomon was approached by two women claiming to own one baby and his solution was to cut the baby in half, which would, of course, kill the baby.