Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I wanted to move to Deputy O'Rourke. He asked about the different calculation formulas. I think he was asking whether we are moving from 2018 to 2030 as the start year. That is correct. It is a 51% reduction. I think the Deputy was asking whether or not that aligns with the 7% reduction every year. What the programme for Government says is an average of 7%. What has to be taken into account is that, in practice, emissions reductions are variable from one year to the next. They can be variable because of factors like weather. There can be a very cold or a very warm winter. There can be a pandemic, as we have had in the past year. There can therefore be asymmetric shocks to the system that lead to great variability in year-on-year emissions. This Act is about looking towards 2050 and then looking at that period in smaller sections: five-year sections for the carbon budgets and ten-year sections for the 51% target for 2030. What is important is that we reach the goals we have set for 2030 and the goal we set for 2050, not that 2027 will see a particular percentage reduction compared with 2026. That is why we have looked at multi-year rather than single-year budgets.

Did Deputy O'Rourke have another point at the end of his contribution that I have missed?