Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

I forgot to answer one part of Deputy Murphy's question on the phrases "be consistent with" and "have regard to". I would be guided by the lawyers on the matter in question. When responding to the committee on Friday, Conor Lenihan stated that "have regard to" was not as strong as "be consistent with", but "have regard to" was not inconsequential. We would prefer the former. If head 11.1 required a public body to take such steps as may be necessary in the performance of its functions, it would be stronger, but I would not dismiss "have regard to".

I should be clear on this issue before we discuss targets further. Friends of the Earth does not expect anyone to turn what science indicates into national law. We respect the democratic right of the Government and the Parliament to decide these issues. We have no problem with the Government rejecting the advice of the external expert body. That is democracy. It has already happened twice in respect of the IFAC, albeit in the special circumstances of the troika programme. However, advice cannot be rejected secretly because no one is paying attention. The Government must tell the Parliament why it is rejecting that advice so that the Executive cannot repeat its rejection and hope that no one notices. This is the difference.

The issues of carry-back, targets and budgets go together. Unless there are budgetary periods, carry-back does not arise. The Bill is weak in this sense, in that it does not set out periodic pathway management mechanisms for breaking down long-term objectives into five-year packages. It has a seven-year roadmap, but there is no clarity on whether that will contain numbers.

At the end of our long submission and having gone through the various ways of getting around the objections to targets, for example, whether they were legal, our last suggestion was simply not to call them targets. It was not flippant, but people seem to have got hung up on the word "targets". Its pure meaning is not that strong. It is something that one aims for and might miss. However, those who are not too keen on having targets take the word as meaning that they will all be put in jail. The original Friends of the Earth Bill in the UK suggested that Ministers' pay would be docked for missing targets, which could prove popular as a legislative measure.