Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is the total. It could go slightly more than that. It could go to €8 billion. It will depend on the degree to which we have failed to meet our targets. We can do a lot in terms of electricity generation. We cannot really do a whole lot about heavy road transport yet. We can minimise it a little but we cannot do a great deal about it because we are talking about 250-horsepower engines, which would require a great deal of electric energy. The response spoken about would, without a doubt, come into play at that stage. We need to talk about these things, isolate them and identify the extent to which we can deal with them.

The last point I want to make relates to the agriculture sector. There is a danger that people may concentrate on agriculture as the bogey man in all of this and decide we must reduce our agricultural production and such like. That is not necessarily true. In fact, it is not true at all if we take into account and balance out the degree to which everything that grows absorbs carbon. Everything that grows absorbs carbon or some other gas of one type or another. We do that in this country in a particular way that they do not do in other countries. In comparison to other European countries, it is possible to use the methodology used in Irish agriculture to bring about reductions to beneficial effect.

I wish to emphasise that there is a danger worldwide of replacing food production with biomass. That would be a dangerous route to go down and a precarious position to take. There will be those who tell us we should take that route but, if they do not eat, people will not survive very long. We need to keep that in mind. Importing biomass from Latin America is not the answer. This creates negative carbon in all directions such as that associated with long-distance transport.

I could go on about this indefinitely, the committee knows that but I do not wish to do so other than to ask a few questions. What would be the witnesses' message to the Irish consumer on achieving the carbon reduction targets over the next number of years? Given there is a tendency to ignore, postpone and hope certain things will go away, do they think this will go away? How to they feel developing countries are likely to be affected over the next ten years or so? Why are they running away? What are they running away from? We know the answer, indeed there are a number of answers. For instance, our response throughout Europe is not what it should be. I have to say that the appearance of razor wire across Europe is not at all the message the European Union, given the principle of free movement of people, should be giving out. I am not impressed by some countries and people whose response is to rob refugees.