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

I thank Mr. Rushe for his contribution. We have limited time, unfortunately. Do members agree that questions will be limited to two minutes? Agreed. If members wish to direct a question to a specific witness, I ask them to identify that witness. If witnesses wish to contribute on any question, I ask them to use the "Raise Hand" function on MS Teams, and I will call them in order.

I will lead off. Given that we have very little time, I will cut to the chase. We have had two compelling sessions in the past two days. Representatives of the Climate Change Advisory Council were with us on Tuesday to speak about the council's proposed carbon budgets up to 2035. Yesterday, we had some independent scientists with us who gave us their views. The general view that emerged was that the carbon budgets needed to be more ambitious than those set out by the Climate Change Advisory Council. I would like to get a sense from our witnesses' of their position in this regard. I thank Mr. Coghlan for explicit stating that the Environmental Pillar supports the trajectory set out by the Climate Change Advisory Council. Do the other witnesses see it as their role to comment on the path that is to be taken? Do they agree with it? Have they done any analysis on it? I ask a representative of each of the groups to respond explicitly to this question.