Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have been following the debate with interest. It is an important debate and I do not think we get into enough of the detail. Fundamentally, everybody here should want to protect livelihoods across rural Ireland and farmers will be doing a lot of the work we need to address climate change.

I want to speak mostly about transport but I will pick up Deputy Durkan's point about the efficiency of our agrifood sector. He is absolutely right. I say this with absolute respect for the Deputy, who I admire greatly, but it is not true to say that our agricultural practices do not harm our environment because they absolutely do. They do so very much at a local level and we must manage and mitigate that as best we can. They certainly do on a global level. Our experts from the OECD will perhaps speak about global and greenhouse gas emissions that are associated with agriculture. We must change how we are doing agriculture. We must be clever about it and figure out a way that actually works for farmers in particular and keeps them working the land and turns them towards doing things in the right way.

I will move on to speak about transport. I have not yet welcomed our guests from the OECD and TASC. I do so now. Ms Samsonova will probably speak about transport. Her colleague in the International Transport Forum, Dr. Elisabeth Windisch, was before the Joint Committee on Climate Action a few months ago. She was excellent and informed a report that committee did on emissions in the transport sector. That report makes 47 recommendations to the Government so I hope when the OECD is doing its next report on Ireland's performance, many of those recommendations will have been taken on board and a serious shift in transport policy in Ireland can be identified, one that it is helping to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, which are 40% of energy-related emissions and 58% of non-emissions trading system, ETS, emissions. It is hugely significant in terms of our emissions profile.

Perhaps the overarching theme of our transport emissions sessions was the avoid, shift and improve approach. The idea is that demand must be managed and the need for journeys must be reduced. Everything that can be done in that space must be done. The second priority is to switch to modes that are more sustainable and only after the possibilities have been exhausted should one start looking at efficiency such as electrification. Our target is to have 1 million electric vehicles on our roads by 2030. That was the target of the old climate action plan and, in my view, it is neither achievable nor desirable, considering that we sell between 100,000 and 120,000 new vehicles every year. It would mean that every new vehicle manufactured between now and 2030 would have to be an electric vehicle and I do not see how we can reach that target without throwing considerable subsidy at the purchase of electric vehicles. It is also not desirable because electric vehicles are still vehicles and still give us a lot of problems, including emissions problems. They do not give us the greenhouse gas emissions but particular emissions are associated with electric vehicles and those are significant. They do not solve many of our problems. It is a costly way to decarbonise mobility and a crude way of reducing emissions. It does not take into account the value of the additionalities, or improvement to air quality, public health and liveability in our towns, villages and cities by reducing space for vehicles. I would like it if our guests could go further in these areas than they have in their statements. It is timely that our guests are before us because a climate action plan will be coming out in the next few months. If our guests could tell us what the State needs to do in transport, it could have a major influence on our policy direction in the next few years.