Dr. Thomas Muinzer:

Yes. New Zealand's Act adopts a split-gasses approach and it separates out a specific target from the rest of the legislation. It is something we want to take note of, especially in Ireland. In this context I am sticking to the legislation. I understand there is policy discourse and discussion around methane in Ireland, which is quite rich and well developed in terms of its legislation. The New Zealand legislation is something we want to take note of as a useful climate change Act that we can look to. There is a similar demographic composition in Ireland and New Zealand. Both countries face some hard problems that the UK does not face insofar as we have a large proportion of our emissions come from the agricultural sector in a way that is simply not the case in the UK and Scotland. New Zealand faces similar problems. The argument for the split-gasses approach is thought to be sensible on the part of some. I would not encourage that approach in the context of our particular Act. Although I recognise that we face particular hard problems in the agricultural sector, for reasons I could go into, I thought it was quite controversial in the New Zealand context. It has occurred but at the same time that context is not Ireland's context. The New Zealand Act has carbon budgets that are more rigidly defined and, effectively, they function as "stepping stones", as described by Prue Taylor, an authority on the New Zealand Act. Those are the stepping stones that drive the emissions trajectory in New Zealand. It has a net zero target that encompasses the rest of the greenhouse gasses in its basket. Methane is separated out but it still has a relatively stringent target. In the context of that framework there is still a high degree of stringency that we are not in a position to import into our Act just yet without some substantial development of how we articulate targets, how we frame our carbon budgets and so on.