Mr. Jonathan Church:

I thank Dr. Muinzer. I will briefly pick up on the greenhouse gas emissions point. It is a potential concern that it is not well defined which greenhouse gases will fall into the bucket. This is particularly given the nature of Ireland's economy and the large proportion of emissions from agriculture, as in New Zealand, where it felt it was necessary to bracket out methane. There are good scientific reasons for doing that because methane is a short-lived rather than long-lived gas. We might want to treat those targets differently.

It is important that throughout this there should be a strong and clear framework. I agree with the comments just made about a tendency to overpack the law. I might put the sectoral decarbonisation target ranges into that bracket of maybe going that extra step. There is already much in this Act, including many duties for the Minister to deal with, reports and time limits. It would be real challenge to produce these decarbonisation target ranges. It might help focus minds but I have concerns that those decarbonisation target ranges do not need to be strictly tied to the carbon budget.

I am always a little nervous of the idea of a target range. It can make sense at an EU level, when there is an attempt to capture disagreements or divergence of views. Are we really saying that we are aiming for a range in any case? If we achieved more than the highest value, for example, would we have missed the target? If the target was a range of 10% to 20% in a period, would a 23% reduction be a failure? There is something strange about using a range in this respect.

By the same token, there is an important place in this for celebrating success. If a target is a 10% reduction by a certain time and a government or a sector achieves a 12% reduction, it should be celebrated. Laws of this kind are often seen as being burdensome but we must create a space for success as well. Perhaps including a range in this way means we can never quite meet that success if we never meet the highest target in the range.