Professor Brian Ó Gallachóir:

Deputy O'Rourke asked about investment and Dr. Daly is best placed to answer that. On Deputy Bruton's question, we explored the impact on competitiveness. A bit like what was mentioned earlier in terms of employment, there are positives and negatives. It relates to the resilience question because if you look at how exposed we are to international fossil fuel crises, that exposure is increasingly limited as we migrate away from fossil fuels. The impacts on competitiveness are hugely complex. Professor Ryan might want to come in on that.

On integrated solutions, I agree fully on the need for these.

This reflects the discussion we had earlier, not so much unifying the models but looking at how outputs from some models interact with others. That would be a useful way in which the modelling could contribute to more integrated solutions.

Regarding how to communicate the resilience, the resilience point is supported by NESC. There are many ways in which the communication of this and making some of the implications tangible are critical to farm businesses and others. The communication is the critical part. Modelling can help in providing some analysis of the impacts of certain decisions, but the communication of the resilience would be an add-on. Certainly, the modelling results could help to provide some of the inputs on how the resilience might be communicated and framed.

Deputy Devlin asked about the pace of change with the transition, which is an enormous question because there are so many aspects to it. At many points we have asked whether the penny has dropped yet in the policy system and in the political system. Has the penny dropped in different sectors in business? Has the penny dropped across society? My sense is that it has not because otherwise we would be in a different place than we are now. Critical to the pace of change is the penny dropping. Policy making in the political area is critical to enabling the pace of change to accelerate towards the transition.

Monitoring of the budgets goes beyond the remit of the committee; the chair of the advisory council might come in on that.

I was not quite clear about the question on offsetting targets. Essentially, we looked at different levels of ambition across different sectors. We looked at the expectations of different sectors achieving different levels of ambition in scenarios where the collective met the overall ambition. That informs trade-offs but it is not something we looked at in detail.

We had access to some information and data on negative emissions. For the period up to 2030, apart from negative admissions from forestry, which we have already discussed, negative emission technologies in terms of carbon capture and other aspects would be for a later period.

Senator Higgins asked about the central targets and ranges. I think she was talking about the climate action plan, which was not part of the committee's remit but it is something that the council reflects on in its annual review. I am aware that the climate action plan is an annual iteration. Therefore, it will evolve and change. Certainly, the next version will take into account the carbon budgets and the sectoral emission ceilings if those are finalised.