Who now remembers the excitement of the discovery of the Marathon gas field off Kinsale and the building of the Irish Fertiliser Industries Nitrigin Éireann plant that was to manufacture nitrogen fertiliser for Irish farmers and so remove one of the sources of severe price fluctuations in a key input?

We could do with such price certainty now.

Russia is by far the main producer of natural gas while Europe is closing down its coal-fired electricity generating plants and Germany is phasing out its nuclear capacity.

Such a venture should be immediately resurrected

Ireland is particularly vulnerable right at the end of the pipeline from Siberia, yet at the same time we have a tremendous natural facility in the Shannon Estuary where various governments have toyed with the proposal to build a liquefied petroleum or natural gas terminal.

Such a venture should be immediately resurrected, declared a strategic infrastructure project and begun as soon as possible.

This at least would give us the flexibility to import gas from the US or Qatar or anywhere else in the world as the shipping of gas becomes an everyday feature of the international fuel trade.

I have not heard anyone suggest a Government fertiliser price stabilisation fund

Even the Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has at last acknowledged that we are going to continue to need gas as a fuel to generate electricity for the foreseeable future, despite the abstract wish to become totally renewable.

Meanwhile, I have not heard anyone suggest a Government fertiliser price stabilisation fund or even a European one, yet such a move would be a logical reaction to what is an unparalled explosion in the cost of an absolutely essential plant nutrient for EU food security. We are really back to fundamentals at this stage.

In the meantime, I listened with intense interest to the excellent Teagasc Review and Outlook Conference for 2021/2022.

Already it seems clear that US fertiliser prices are below their European equivalents – especially in nitrogen

What forcibly struck me was how European prices essentially reflect world prices in pretty well all commodities and we have good figures for these output prices from around the world. We do not have the same visibility on input prices. Already it seems clear that US fertiliser prices are below their European equivalents – especially in nitrogen.

Teagasc should set up a price monitoring unit covering the normal range of inputs, across a range of countries. It would provide useful visibility, especially when it is clear that Europe’s focus for the CAP has shifted dramatically from food production and food security.