Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am trying to bring together all the different thoughts. As a State we have signed up to cutting our emissions and we have to get to that, regardless of how we do it. If we do more on transport, arguably we might have to do a little less on agriculture, if we did a bit more on agriculture, we would have to do a little less on transport. Whether we like it or not we as a Parliament, be it Seanad or Dáil, have signed up to cutting our emissions one way or the other. We might not like it, it might be painful, but we agreed it is the only show in town. This is part of it. Some of this is going to be less painful. It sounds to me that the maritime stuff will be less painful perhaps in that it is more doable in terms of the electric charging. I know we are saying it is 5,000 people on a cruise ship but it is doable. Some of the aviation stuff is a bit more aspirational.

I would be very wary of the emissions trading and the abolition of €900 million or thereabouts of free credits that are there now. That all has to feed back in and ultimately passengers right across Europe will pay that. It might not be a great deal per head but it is there. We as a committee have to decide which of the six proposals we can we live with and which do we have to raise flags about. Of the six of them, the Department is not telling us it wants to us to raise flags on any of them. Is that correct?