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

I thank Professor Ryan, the other witnesses and Senator Pauline O'Reilly. Before we go into a second round, I will ask some questions. Senator O'Reilly got in ahead of me and kick-started an interesting discussion on the gap between policy and the work the advisory council is doing in setting the trajectory. I suggest there is possibly a second bridge between policy and politics. Politicians, lamentably, run a mile from very difficult discussions. We cannot have climate mitigation unless we have very difficult discussions and make very hard and unpopular decisions which we have to own. If that first bridge is not built, we cannot build the second bridge.

We are not there yet in joining up with the work of the Climate Change Advisory Council. There is a significant gap in respect of the pressure that needs to be on politicians and the information at their disposal. While acknowledging that the advisory council has a limited remit, I do not think it could have done the modelling it did without playing around with different policy instruments. That needs to be out in the open and communicated. Otherwise politicians will run a mile and we will not get the climate action we need. I am not speaking about any member of this committee. They are all very committed. Outside of this committee, I would certainly suggest there is not the pressure that is needed. That is going to result in us failing to stick to this trajectory. As Professor Ó Gallachóir said, what is being set out is incredibly ambitious but we have no choice in this. I would be interesting in Professor Ó Gallachóir's or Dr. Donnellan's comments on the significant gap between the work the council is doing and what the politicians need to do.

I have a question for Dr. Hanrahan. I was interested in what he said about the model Teagasc is working with. It is very much an economic model. I would love to play around with it. Does the biodiversity challenge form part of the model? It is a great concern. We could make great strides in agriculture in mitigating carbon emissions but we could so while further devastating biodiversity. Does or should Teagasc's model go there? Does it need to be developed further?