Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I will address my first question on governance to Mr. Watt. It has been good to read Mr. Watt's presentation to see how he identifies and addresses the attitudes that have led Ireland to be known as the climate laggard. That is where we are at present. The Oireachtas considered the best legislative approach to ensuring the Government and Civil Service gave the necessary priority to climate change and so enacted the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015. However, the legislation has not put us on the path of transition in line with the national transition objective and the Taoiseach has acknowledged this. NGOs have said that we are second worst in Europe and the Climate Change Advisory Council states we are going completely in the wrong direction and the State is facing legal action because we are not meeting our obligations. Some 97% of the members of the Citizens' Assembly recommended that there would be some kind of governance body set up and that we would look at specific functions, including the setting of a body of five year targets and a function of pursuing the State in legal proceedings to ensure legal obligations would be met. In the course of his opening address Mr. Watt referred to some of these issues and I would like him to go into more detail on governance and how he sees a governance mechanism as supporting Ireland in this regard.

The Climate Change Advisory Council has been modelled in part on the UK climate change committee and in part it was modelled on the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and both of these bodies have been far more successful in getting the British Government to take advice. Has Mr. Watt any insight as to why they are making more progress than we in Ireland are making?

On Project Ireland 2040, Mr. Watt's statement emphasises the importance of public spending that supports the achievement of Ireland's low carbon transition. Did the Department produce an analysis of the climate impact of Project Ireland 2040 in order to enable the Government to ensure its decisions in that major plan will support the achievement of the low carbon transition? None of us has seen an analysis and we have been told that 20% of the plan will support low carbon transition but, of course, if much of the remaining 80% of the plan is undermining transition, it will not work. Does Mr. Watt have an analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions which will result from the implementation of project Ireland 2040? If not, is the Department prepared to do a retrospective review so that we can see what the impact of Project 2040 will be?