Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The stability programme update for the first time accounted for the risk of the State facing large fines for not meeting EU emissions targets. This relates to renewable targets as well. I do not have the exact figures but if the State misses the renewable targets, there will be fines of hundreds of millions of euro annually because we are nowhere near them. We do not have a snowball's chance in hell of achieving them unless the Department changes what it is doing. Business as usual will not get us there because even that is going into reverse. Energy efficiency does not have the same implications in respect of fines but the overall energy efficiency figures in the output statement, in 2014, the Government had an output target of 405 GW in energy savings but it only achieved 169 GW. There was a CO2 equivalent target of 100 kilotonnes but only 41 was achieved, which is less than half. Across the board, the State is going radically in the wrong direction for all its renewable, energy efficiency and carbon reduction targets and is facing huge costs as well as inefficiencies and so on.

The SEAI pointed out the obvious that if we were to meet our targets and save ourselves the several million euro a year in fines we are facing, we would require a threefold increase in energy efficiency investment and a fivefold increase in our investment in alternative transport systems to take the targets seriously. We have an amazing urgency in this committee to examine how those increases in spending will be provided for these sectors over the next two to three years if we are to meet the 2020 targets. There is no reason to fail to do this but political will is required and it will not be easy for a Department that is used to spending approximately €100 million to ramp up its spending to €500 million or €60 million but that needs to be done. If not, the State will be paying €200 million or €300 million annually in fines. That is not a small task but that is what must be done in two years.