Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the delegations for their presentations. The departmental review of this issue is quite depressing. I direct that view towards the Government rather than the officials present. The Government has not shown the political will needed to address what is now a crisis based on what the EPA had to state. We have known for some time the extent to which we are going to miss our targets. For a while there was a denial at Government level that we would miss them. The expectation was that we would catch up, but it has been known for some time that this is not going to happen.

I have a couple of questions for the departmental officials. Has the cost, in terms of the fines we will have to pay for missing our targets, been estimated. Has there been any advance planning in that regard? When do the officials think we will hit our 2020 targets? Given that we know that we will not do so in 2020, in what year are we likely to hit them? On reading through the material provided by the Department it crossed my mind that, just like the gambling addict, we were putting everything on the next race, namely, the 2030 targets, even though we have not figured out how to address the 2020 targets. The presentation is peppered with ifs, buts and maybes. We know that technology is improving, but 2025 is beyond the cycle of the Government and many of us here. It appears that the Department is in the position of not being able to do anything. It cannot bring forward proposals that would make a serious stab at addressing the crisis; therefore, it is pushing the issue out to the future and hoping for the best. At that time it will be somebody else's problem. If one takes that approach, whoever is in government in 2025 could take the same approach because at that time there will be different technologies and new ways of doing things. That has always been the standard cover for not doing anything and leaving an issue for somebody else to address.

I have considerable sympathy for the departmental officials, given the Government's lack of support for them. There is a lot of talk, as well as a lot of plans, dates and acronyms, but no action. Some work is being done by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, in developing pilot programmes and projects, but I do not get the impression that there is money available to roll them out in a meaningful way. We still have the Government buying diesel buses because, we are told, the alternatives will be cheaper at a later stage. Some 120 diesel buses were purchased recently. We are told that the next fleet of buses will use an alternative fuel or be battery operated and thus be more economical. I have been hearing about 50,000 electric vehicles for a long time, but nothing has materialised. Anybody who takes an interest in this issue and reads the blogs will know that the people who have bought such cars would readily part with them in the morning if they could do so. The reality is that the infrastructure to support fast-charging is not in place. The issue is not range anxiety but range reality because no effort is being made at a central level to support those who have made the shift. We know how behaviour has changed. It is about ensuring the people who make a change will be supported, but those who have bought electric vehicles have not and are not being supported. My eyes glaze over when I hear the Minister make announcements about electric vehicles and the provision of support for their purchase. There was nothing in the budget in that regard. There was talk about benefit-in-kind being eliminated for three or five years, yet in the Finance Act it was only captured for 12 months, with a review promised with a view to it being continued for a further three years, which is ridiculous. Companies that are buying fleets need certainty, but there is not that certainty. All we are getting is lip-service and announcements. The Government is great at doing that, but the people who are attempting to change their behaviour are not being supported.

Perhaps all of the delegations might get together, with a view to identifying three or four steps that they would take that would have a meaningful impact in addressing the 2020 targets. It is not acceptable for the Government to state - again, I am not attributing this to Mr. Carroll, but he is here representing the Minister and the Government - that we are only one quarter of the way there, that there was a downturn and that there is nothing we can do. When will the targets be reached and is there anything the Department can do to fast-track its approach to getting closer to the targets than what is anticipated?