Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

I would be happy to do so. The Deputy's first question concerned the interaction between the external advisory council and Oireachtas committees, and I absolutely endorse that. A prescribed relationship or role for The Oireachtas committees is not in the heads of Bill, as far as I recall, but it would be important. Members' hearts might sink to hear it this evening but in our submission we suggested that the committee should also see the national and sectoral roadmaps, although we do not suggest that the committee would necessarily hold hearings on them all. There is a role not just afterwards but beforehand for the Oireachtas committee most appropriate to this issue.

I will try not to be confused by what the NESC proposed as an internal arrangement for climate issues against the proposals in the Action Plan for Jobs. The Taoiseach has a role in convening the relevant stakeholders and in this case the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation has a role as well, working from the Taoiseach's Department to bring in the agencies or stakeholders as required to move things forward. The first responsibility lies with the line Minister and there is a cross-governmental aspect. In the UK the Department responsible for the environment and the Treasury publish some of the carbon budget materials.

There is a steering committee of senior officials in the Action Plan for Jobs, with working groups that contain some of the stakeholders; these are not on the external advisory body but are in a position to identify roadblocks or policy inconsistencies between having a renewables target, for example, and having incoherencies in energy efficiency targets for electricity. There would be an ability to bring those concerns directly to people who are developing the policy, which makes sense on an internal basis. My understanding is that NESC is doing more work on the Action Plan for Jobs as a model for environmental decision making more generally, and that will be published in due course. There are supposedly rules about NESC working papers being published before being finalised but I understand the committee may invite representatives of the council before it again. Perhaps members could ask them to elaborate on how they see what we can learn for environmental decision making from the Action Plan for Jobs, as they would have more detail than me.

With regard to commenting on the positives in the Bill, many components are missing, especially compared to where we started with targets and inclusion of the emissions trading sector, offsets and purely national targets. This Bill nevertheless has positive elements. For example, it is good that the line Minister and others with sectoral roadmaps must come before the Oireachtas on an annual basis to report on progress. The problem with climate policy has been that there has not been sustained media attention to drive accountability, and it is quite easy for the Executive to let matters slide, even if it does not mean to. For example, the Kyoto targets were adopted ten years in advance and there was always the possibility that action would be put off a little longer, which is what happened; we dropped policies along the way and did not replace them with something else. In the end we relied on the economic crash to meet the Kyoto targets. If a Minister must come before the Parliament every year, having produced a plan in the first place, to report progress and be subject to questioning by this or the relevant committee, it means we will not drop policies without replacing them, which has been a problem in the past.

There will be legislation to have not just national but also sectoral plans, generating momentum across Government over time, which is also good. The list of elements that those plans must have regard to or be consistent with is not bad, although we add climate justice to it. We continue to argue that the engine is missing if the target is not translated. The Deputy mentioned that 2020 targets are essentially set or reflected in this Bill.