Ms Michelle Murphy:

As Dr. Healy outlined, it is essential that every sector contributes to this effort. With regard to policy tools and actions, a continued focus on cost-neutral or cost-effective actions to mitigate the impacts of climate change is misguided. While addressing the impact of climate change and implementing adaptation policies comes at a cost and requires strong collective effort, the cost of inaction is much higher. As Dr. Healy outlined, if Ireland is to succeed in addressing our climate and other challenges, the pathway to this must be founded on consensus and must be well managed and properly evaluated. We welcome the commitment in the climate action plan to social and national dialogue on climate action to ensure the move to a sustainable future for all will be fair and successful. Stakeholders from all sectors of society - the young, old, urban and rural, along with businesses, trade unions, farmers, the community and voluntary sector, and the social inclusion and environmental sectors - must be involved in the process. Every sector faces a challenge in implementing the carbon budgets.

With regard to agriculture, the Ag Climatise strategy, while committing to a reduction in absolute emissions from agriculture, does not detail the specific targets or outline the difficult, yet very necessary, policy changes that must be introduced if absolute emissions from agriculture are to be reduced. Improvements in production efficiency will not be enough to meet our targets. The long-term trajectory of the livestock sector must be considered. Continued support for the beef sector should be contingent on stronger conditionality, and essential income support for low-income farm households via the CAP should be consistent with our green transition ambitions.

On transport, despite the reductions in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, significant and substantial investment is required to develop a public transport network powered by electricity and renewable energy.

It is vital that the upgrade to the public network has a strong focus on connectivity to support people from rural and regional areas to travel by public transport. However, road transport is just one element of transport emissions. Air travel is now second only to private cars as a share of transport energy. Therefore, we must also look at the aviation sector and the policy levers that are available to ensure that this sector makes a contribution. Now that the Government has published the impacts of aviation taxation in Ireland, it is important that the key recommendations of this report, including abolishing the jet kerosene exemption, are implemented in full.

Energy is the third largest driver of our emissions. One of the most cost-effective means of reducing our emissions is through retrofitting and increasing building energy efficiency. However, issues around renewable energy subsidies and energy poverty must be addressed. Incentives and tax structures must look at the impact on protecting people from energy poverty and ensuring that subsidies are not taken up only by those who can afford the necessary investments. For this reason, a State-led retrofitting scheme will be required to ensure that people living in social housing and poor quality housing have access.

On the tools needed to deliver on the ambition, our taxation system should reflect the environmental cost of the goods and services, while ensuring that revenue from environmental taxes is used to offset any regressive impacts. Environmental subsidies are a key element of the tax code that need to be reviewed. In 2018, €2.4 billion was not collected by the Exchequer. Instead, it was revenue forgone due to the preferential tax treatment supporting fossil fuel activities. The value of these subsidies is substantially higher than the allocation to just transition and biodiversity and it offers a significant pot of money to Government to implement climate policy. There must be policy coherence so that our policies on environmental subsidies and other strategies such as agriculture and transport do not undermine our environmental targets.

Social Justice Ireland has consistently proposed additional supports and measures for those who are less well-placed to make the low carbon transition. One of the fundamental principles of the just transition is to leave no people, communities, economic sectors or regions behind as we transition to a low carbon future. Transition to a sustainable economy can only be successful if it is inclusive and if the social rights and well-being of all are promoted. Transition is not just about reducing emissions. It is about transforming our society and economy, investing in effective and integrated social protection systems and services such as education, training, lifelong learning and healthcare. This is because it is these services and that social investment that will support those people, communities, sectors and regions which will be most impacted by the change we must make. A comprehensive mitigation transition strategy is required to ensure there is comprehensive public support for our climate goals.