Farmers not main culprits in climate change - councillors

Cllr Des Guckian said that Leitrim's Climate Action Plan should "not be designed to unduly affect farmers and I think planes flying over Leitrim are far more damaging than any and all of the farmers in Co. Leitrim, the cars passing through, and the trains."  

Cllr Padraig Fallon added that "one thing that is lost in the debate on greenhouse gas emissions is the family farm's role in carbon sequestration and the positive work that is being done in rural counties like Leitrim. It's important that we publicise that."

The councillors were responding to a presentation given by Richard Deeney, Senior Environmental Scientist at Fehily Timoney and Company, who calculated the Baseline Emissions Inventory (BEI) for Co. Leitrim. The BEI has been calculated for the county using 2018 as the baseline year.

Mr Deeney said the three sectors contributing most to greenhouse gas emissions in Leitrim are agriculture, particularly cattle farming, transport, particularly from private cars and residential as with most other rural counties with some councillors questioning these results.

At the same meeting, Morgan Crumlish, KPMG Future Analytics spoke about the Leitrim County Council Decarbonising Zone which is Carrick-on-Shannon.

A decarbonising zone is a spatial area identified by the local authority, in which a range of climate mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity measures and action owners are identified to address local low carbon energy, greenhouse gas emission and climate needs to contribute to national climate action targets.

Cllr Paddy O'Rourke said that there has been a significant reduction in the number of cattle in the county since 2018 and that figures calculated from that year are no longer accurate.

Another baseline survey will take place in 2029, stressed Marie Mulligan, Senior Executive Engineer in the Environment Section at Leitrim County Council, "so if improvements have been made in the farming sector it will show up in those figures and in terms of the reductions that we have to make; some of it may already have been achieved. 2029 will tell another story on how close we are to hitting those targets."