Ms Marie Donnelly:

I have been following with great interest the discussions until now and indeed I want to come in on a few points. I was making a list for later.

Specifically, I would like to come back to Senator Higgins on the two issues that she has raised. On the Paris Agreement question and that part of the document, I will be very honest with the committee. That part of the document is very technical. Personally, I found it very difficult to follow it and to understand it. The key issue that we as a council insisted upon was that we would meet the temperature objectives and goals required of Ireland out of the Paris Agreement. In other words, we took the 1.5° temperature as an obligation on Ireland to achieve as part of our contribution to a global action for climate change. Members will see from the very beginning paragraph of that section, we took the view that we had to contribute at least to that. Therefore, with each of the scenarios we looked at we asked if these will keep us below 1.5°? Forget where we start from and forget everybody else, will these keep Ireland's contribution below 1.5°? I will caution with one small point. With regard to those graphs, the numbers that are degrees to the power of ten must be read a little bit carefully because they are not actually temperature degrees. They are not degrees of 1°, 1.5 °,2° or whatever the case might be. It is actually degree changes. We asked the scientists to forget where we are starting from and to forget everybody else. The question we asked was "Will the budgets we are proposing keep Ireland's contribution to the 1.5° of Paris?" The answer to that was "Yes, with one exception." That was the extreme instance where the energy scenario went to 69%. All of the other budgets keep us to the 1.5°. That was the key issue. As the committee is aware, the Paris Agreement is about more than temperatures. There is also social justice, food supplies, and equity across all of the communities globally. There are many aspects to the Paris Agreement but this is the one we felt that we really must focus on and was a litmus test by which Ireland would verify in this carbon budget that it would not exceed the 1.5°. That was the analysis we put in at that stage.

The second point was a letter that was sent by the council to the Department on foot of a query from the Minister. The Senator will recall the discussions that took place in the Oireachtas on the last-minute changes to get clarification regarding the removals, and the decision that was ultimately put into the legislation that there would be regulations adopted. The Department sought the advice of the committee in terms of the regulations that would be adopted prior to the budget being recommended by the council. We sent a letter of reply.

I believe I said when I was speaking before this committee on the previous occasion that the discussion that took place during all of August last year came as something of a shock because I, and I fear many people like myself, had not realised that our forest sink was degrading and likely to disappear between now and 2030. We will, therefore, find ourselves in an extremely difficult position not just for 2030 but indeed if we project out to 2050, as Dr. Styles has been talking about, where if we do not have sufficient forest and forest sink we would not be able to achieve a net-zero position by 2050. That was the situation we were confronted with in August. We looked at it and said that biophysical processes are what they are. Even if we planted half of Ireland today, we would still not have the emissions sink in place by 2030 because it takes 15 or 20 years for the tree to grow and start to absorb. We were in a position where, frankly, there was absolutely nothing we could do on the day.

We have two choices then. We say that we are sorry we are in a hole and let us keep digging or we say that we are in a hole and we have to start to address the problem. We said to the Department that it needs to build in incentives for afforestation roll-out across the country and if that means looking at some sort of a carbon credit system that would incentivise afforestation, the technology calculations from a scientific perspective would allow that to be done. However, it was absolutely fundamental that we did not double count. It is like what we are saying in the legislation that we have a carbon budget 1 and a carbon budget 2 and we can effectively carry over from one budget to another. If we exceed the target in the first budget then it makes it easier for the second one and, unfortunately, vice versa, if we do not achieve it the first budget, it actually gets carried over to the second budget. The same logic is needed to incentivise afforestation. There are scientific methods that can be used, if needed, to calculate what that carbon credit could be. The fundamental issue is that carbon credit cannot be counted twice. That is what we said in our letter to the Department.

As it happens and as the Senator knows, the regulations that were adopted, I believe in the beginning of October, do not in fact address this issue. I do not know if it is a matter that the Department is still considering, or considering for future purposes, but that is the rationale and what we said in our letter, given the analysis that we did. Dr. Styles was being polite in some of his comments. I hope that I was a little clearer on my earlier appearance before the committee but I will certainly be clearer today. We are in a serious hole in respect of our afforestation rate in this country and it is an immediate and urgent challenge to get the policies right to reverse that. Otherwise, so much of the other work that we do will be unsuccessful because we have to have a sink in place. We have the land opportunity and the knowledge of how to do it and that is one of the highest policies on our agenda right now.

If I may, Chairman, I will come back to one of his other questions perhaps at the end.