To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs what consideration his Department has given to (i) the development of sectoral plans for the agriculture sector; and (ii) the rollout of carbon audits of farms to assess where performance improvements and savings can be made, as required in the Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022.

Sectoral plans will be included within Northern Ireland’s first Climate Action Plan. The Climate Action Plan is required to be laid before the Assembly before the end of December 2023 and the sectoral plan for agriculture will be taken forward in line with the overall approach to and timeline for producing the Climate Action Plan.

My Officials are currently developing a Farm Carbon Policy for Northern Ireland and it is expected that farm carbon auditing will form part of this policy and could gather data to assess where performance improvements and savings can be made.