Professor John Sweeney:

I wish to return to the University College Cork, UCC, modelling which has been advanced as - and is - an excellent least cost model. I very much admire the work of Professor Ó Gallachóir. However, Dr. Walker made a couple of points regarding outputs which I wish to address. The two scenarios chosen by IBEC, one of which is based on the research of Dr. Alessandro Chiodi and others, are non-Paris-compliant scenarios. However, the model is very sensitive to the input assumptions which are made. As Dr. Walker stated, one will get different answers depending on the weapons one chooses as inputs. Under those scenarios, Ireland's CO2 emissions would have to be reduced by 16% by 2020 and 44% by 2030 in order to comply with the model pathway which is required. I note Dr. Walker is not very keen on the 20% target for 2020 and I suspect he would not be very happy about a 44% target for 2030. However, a reference which is not included the IBEC submission and is a Paris-compliant scenario confirms Ireland would exceed its Paris requirements in terms of the quota referenced elsewhere of 766 million tonnes of CO2 by 2033. It is disingenuous to begin picking solutions without looking closely at the assumptions concerned.