David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is a new climate action plan in place but before it came into being, the reality, as per the facts presented by the Comptroller and Auditor General, is that the State is failing to meet all the targets set out in his report. Unless drastic changes occur as a consequence of implementing the climate action plan, and we do not know what that will mean, the assumption from representatives of organisations which came before us is that it is unlikely we will reach the targets we have set ourselves for 2030. A problem I have with this, and I said this to the representatives of the Economic and Social Research Institute and the Central Statistics Office when they appeared before the committee, is that when we push a target out for that length of time and have such a target for 2030, a representative appearing before the committee today in 2019 or in 2020 or in 2021 can say what will be done down the road might get us to 2030 target. However, Mr. Carroll will possibly have left his position by that time and somebody else will most likely be telling the person in my seat, if I am not here, that we have not reached our targets. The problem is that while we have long-term targets, we do not have short to medium term ones to allow us to properly assess what is and is not being achieved.