Mr. Frank Maughan:

I thank the Deputy. I might lead off in responding and ask Mr. Regan to come in on the relationship to domestic legislation.

On the overall schedule, it is very early days. The package was only published in July. It contains 13 proposals in total, five of which are completely new, eight of which are amending existing pieces of legislation, and more proposals are to follow later in the year. They are spread across a number of Council formations in Brussels, including the Environment Council, the Energy Council and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council. The two proposals before the committee today are being dealt with at the Environment Council. Member states have really only started the process of examining the proposals. There has been an initial round of meetings, probably on most of the proposals, at this stage.

That includes the Commission presenting the proposals and initial questions. This will roll out over the next 18 months to two years. There is a long agenda of negotiations. The negotiations which took place a number of years ago to adopt the current 2030 climate targets took up to three years to complete, so it is a long process. The Deputy made a point about data, supporting Senator Boylan's point. I have addressed the implications for the carbon tax in response to an initial question from the Chair already. This will potentially have implications for the scope of the carbon tax but these are early stages. These are policy decisions for the Government. I will restate what I said in my opening statement. The Oireachtas has legislated for a schedule of carbon tax increases up to 2030. That will take place. The interplay between that legislation and these proposals needs to be carefully thought through.