Mr. Neil Walker:

Perhaps I might quote Dr. Rory O'Donnell of NESC who said that policy is a loop and not a line. If one buys into that, there needs to be constant two-way communication. It may be that there are several iterations. Nobody writes a plan that will be good for 40 years - it will need to change. To the extent that there is a national target and a framework, it is then necessary to ask each of the sectors what it is possible to do, what it would cost and what policy design is required to do it. Some of them may need more encouragement because they have not been at it as long. The individual plans are then added together and reviewed. That is what the European Commission does with renewable energy and energy-efficiency action plans to see whether the national plans in total add up to the overall target.

There is likely to be a shortfall, for the simple reason the European Commission intended that in Ireland's case there would be a shortfall. This is why we were given an extra 4% in the target, so we would have a choice between more expensive domestic measures or funding work elsewhere in the EU.

It would be a matter for the national roadmap to state how big the gap would be. There almost certainly will be a gap, even if the economy stays in the doldrums. Effectively our reduction is not 20%; it is probably more than 30% when one considers the sheer difficulty of abating emissions from soil processes and enteric fermentation in the agriculture sector. Even if one could come up with a novel technology, such as vaccinating cows to stop them burping or particular chemical inhibitors which would stop soil bugs from decomposing matter into nitrous oxide, the UN accounting system would not recognise them as savings. It is likely there will be some use of flexibility instruments in the EU and this is not a bad thing; it is what the Commission wants us to do. It will not be for an individual sector to state it can do nothing so it will meet its share of the burden through the purchase of instruments. This would be an issue for the central road map.