Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I confirm I am on the Leinster House campus. I thank all our guests for coming to the meeting and giving us an interesting session. I found today's discussion much more about the urgency of the situation we are facing than the discussion yesterday, which I was unable to participate in. I do not criticise the committee for a lack of urgency yesterday. The problem is the framework under which the committee is acting. It is an even deeper problem when one thinks about the fact that we have a Green Party Minister. If we cannot get it right now, we could be facing into the second half of our carbon budgets without the commitment of a Green Party Minister. It is important that this committee acts to get it right. I take all of the contributions very seriously. They give us a lot of food for thought.

I have a couple of questions and matters on which I would like our guests to elaborate. Perhaps Professor Anderson can answer my first question. To what extent do carbon budgets depend on future technologies for carbon capture and storage, CCS? What does the professor think is the danger of that? My understanding is that the development of future technologies is not anywhere near a place where they could help to deal with the requirements of these budgets.

I do not know who can answer my next question, which is about the omission of aviation and shipping. I think Professor McMullin said it is unclear why aviation and shipping were omitted. Is it unusual for a country to do that? Is it avoidance? It is quite shocking that aviation was left out of the budgets, given the role that Irish aviation plays in the whole European outfit.

Somebody mentioned equity within countries. This is all, of course, to do with just transition. Most emissions do not come from most people. That is an important point for us to keep in mind. It relates to the question of transport. There is a high dependency on private car ownership in this country because we have an appalling public transport infrastructure.