Professor Brian Ó Gallachóir:

I thank Deputy O'Sullivan for that easy question. I suspect this committee has produced reports previously and they are presented in a certain way. I presume the discussions leading up to the development of those reports are robust. This reflects what happens in the committee. We have many things to grapple with and various people on the committee have various levels of expertise in each of these areas. In arriving at a consensus I would have been disappointed if there was not robust discussion on the analysis or if there were no differences in perspective and viewpoints. Sometimes in our discussions, as would be expected, we veered. If we were looking at sectoral emissions targets and pathways, we might start talking about the interactions between them in the context of discussions relating more to the implications for sectoral emissions savings but they were not part of our remit. My sense, and others can feel free to contribute, is that everyone participated with the perspectives, analysis and viewpoints they brought to the table. From my perspective, the discussions were very robust and productive. At the start of the process, I did not anticipate we would be able to arrive at the point we did with the report within a six-month period. There were very robust discussions but there is a strong consensus on the final report.

We got some analysis on biodiversity and it is contained in the report. It is not my area of expertise. It is an area we were anxious to include in the analysis. A challenge was to grapple within the six-month period with all we had to grapple with and, at times, to identify and be able to draw in the analysis as we would have liked to have had if we had a longer time period. We certainly included some analysis on the biodiversity implications included in the report. Perhaps Mr. Donnellan can answer this.