Professor John Sweeney:

It is a difficult question to answer. Much of it goes back to what Professor McMullin was saying about society having set the budgets. It is now up to individuals, led by the Government, to implement the necessary carrot-and-stick approach to achieve them. Professor McMullin spoke about energy, and it will be one of the easier areas to tackle over the next ten years. I suspect that rationing will be needed even in that area, and that Professor McMullin is correct on that point. Equally, however, we must also tackle agriculture. In the short term, we need a commitment that we will reduce our national herd and make an ongoing reduction in our methane emissions of at least 3% annually. That is an important figure. If we can reduce these emissions by 3% per year, we will not then add too much in the long term to the burden of climate warming due to methane emissions. We must, however, put that aim into practice, perhaps using the ban on artificial insemination idea floated yesterday as one possibility. There should certainly be no question of an increase in our cattle numbers, and a reduction is imperative if we are to realise any of these carbon budgets.

We also need a limit on nitrogen use. It is the driver. As I said, we have targets for nitrogen use by 2030 of 325,000 tonnes. Why not bring that date forward to 2022 or 2023? Why not limit and throttle the overuse of fertilisers, which is now causing so much damage to the quality of our lakes and rivers in many parts of the country?

If we listen to the director of the EPA on this topic, we begin to understand that there are two semi-State organisations in Ireland on very different trajectories. Teagasc’s roadmap for 2027 envisages something like 200,000 more cows, which sees an increase of 19% and an increase in the average herd size to 100. That is not compatible with any of our carbon budget targets. That has to be tackled at source. We have to do that.

Beyond agriculture, we need urgent changes to our planning system. We are not building houses or apartments where there is a mandatory requirement for a home charger, for example. We are not making the procurement policies that recognise companies that are really counting their emissions properly. These are short-term measures that would help. We need not just the stick but also the carrot; we need incentives. As Professor Anderson said, we need to tax the 10% of people who cause 50% of the emissions. That is an equitable thing to do. We can perhaps consider tackling the likes of SUVs and city centre parking privileges. In the short term, doing so would hopefully force more people to use public transport, once it becomes more acceptable to use it and the pandemic is over.

Many small steps can be taken. They will add up, but they will have to be taken according to the precautionary principle in the next 18 months, not in 2025. As Deputy Whitmore stated, if we are not meeting our targets by 2025, we will face litigation. We will face litigation long before that. We will face it if we are not meeting our targets by 2023 because we will be obliged to meet them one way or another. It will be by hardship that we will meet them if we have not already done so by 2024 and 2025. It is urgent to do, in the next 18 months, what we envisage in the budget.