Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will speak on amendments Nos. 10 and 11 together. Amendment No. 9 has been ruled out of order and while Deputies are welcome to submit another version of that amendment on Report Stage, amendments Nos. 9, 10 and 11 all pull together. In practical terms, with amendment No. 9 having been ruled out of order, the provisions in amendments Nos. 10 and 11 do not add up.

I say this genuinely. As I did not make an introductory statement, I think it goes beyond just Government versus Opposition as regards the amendments. I am looking at taking some amendments on Report Stage following on from this discussion. I will take on board everything everyone has said and will look at taking some amendments. I will make reference to it throughout. I did not get a chance to make it yet because I have only got to this stage. In response to Deputy Dowds, I will look at this again. As amendments Nos. 9 to 11, inclusive, are related and amendment No. 9 has been ruled out of order, it is not something we can establish here.

The proposal to establish annual mitigation targets for each year from 2015 to 2050, having an interim target in 2020 and a final target in 2050, will demand a lot of consideration. It does not take account of the legally binding mitigation targets that are being set by the EU to which we are bound as part of the international process. There can only be two outcomes. Either domestic mitigation targets are lower than those set by the EU, in which case they would be redundant, or they are higher than those set by the EU, in which case they would be seeking decarbonisation not least as a cost to the national economy and thereby endangering our economic recovery and putting us at an economic disadvantage compared to the rest of the EU.

Those are the two options. We might bear this in mind when we come back on Report Stage and look at this again. I should also add that the report of the joint committee on the outline heads of the Bill did not establish domestic mitigation targets separate to those decided upon as part of successive EU effort sharing decisions. We will come back to this on Report Stage and I will look at it again. In this context, I ask that the amendments be withdrawn. If the Deputy wishes to submit them in a different way, we can look at that.