Mr. Joseph Curtin:

The Chairman asked if forestry could be used as an offset. Forestry sucks in CO2, and agriculture releases methane and nitrous oxide. That may be where they are coming from. As the others said, it is not directly offsetting the emissions produced by agriculture so it cannot really be considered an offset. Slide 8 shows that even if we were to use all of our flexibility in forestry, there is still an enormous gap to target. In the more literal sense, even if we were to maximise our forestry sink and maximise our purchase of ETS credits, we still have an enormous potential gap to target based on the current projections which may be on the negative side in terms of economic growth in the period to 2020. There are many ways in which the Chairman's questions could be interpreted, but that may add something.

Deputy Dooley mentioned the costs to 2020. My analysis considered the costs to 2020 and then to 2030. There are two aspects to the costs to 2020. There is the emissions cost and the cost of our renewables targets, both of which are legally binding. On the emissions target, I took the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment or EPA estimates of carbon prices of between five tonnes and ten tonnes to produce a high-end and low-end estimate. For the renewables target, I based the cost of missing using an SEAI estimate of €150 million per percentage point and I extrapolated in an optimistic and pessimistic scenario of where we would be for 2020 on our renewables targets. The analysis is all there and is available to pick apart or agree with members wish. To cut a long story short, on the cost to the Exchequer by 2020 including both targets, I provide a range of between €230 million and €610 million.