Professor John Sweeney:

I thank Senator O'Reilly. She has touched on many issues which I can comment upon, and Dr. Jackson might elaborate on them further.

As I mentioned previously, it is open to the State to measure whatever gases it likes and however it wants to do that. Ultimately, however, issues such as black carbon and sulphur hexafluoride, for example, and those kinds of other complicating gases, will be reported according to the IPCC methodology, no matter what we do in the State now. We cannot get around that.

I agree completely regarding the issue of nitrogen balance. It is interesting that the Bill in Northern Ireland, which was submitted this morning, makes a great deal out of the importance of nitrogen in this area. We do not seem to have grasped that fact in this Bill. In many ways, how much nitrogen we import and put on our lands is the key to how well we will cope with methane emissions and other greenhouse gas emissions emanating from land use. The Senator is quite correct in emphasising that aspect.

Climate justice is one of these things which is difficult to define, but I think the State has certainly not been particularly generous towards the Green Climate Fund, for example, in the last decade. There have been modest increases, but we are still an order of magnitude less in respect of our contributions to that fund compared with some of the more generous countries, some of which have much lower GDP per capitathan us. We have international obligations, therefore, with which we could achieve better results and achieve much more in the context of contributions to climate justice as well. This issue comes back to the fair share of the remaining carbon budget that Ireland Inc. should claim in the future so as to allow some of the poorer countries of the world to reach a level of development acceptable to them. I will revert to the committee on a just transition.