Mr. Conor Ó Raghallaigh:

I thank the Deputy. We are building on a lot of the foundations he put in place during his time as Minister. I have only been in this sphere for a few months but, having come back to it after having worked in climate policy a decade earlier, my own view is that there has been significant change with regard to the framework in which we are now operating. The legislative scheme that has been put in place brings a degree of concrete reality to the situation. There are now very concrete ceilings under the carbon budget process. Sectoral emissions ceilings will follow. For policymakers, Ministers and civil servants, this provides a definite set of parameters in which we and the sectors we are responsible for regulating will have to operate. The thinking has changed. We have to move from the "best endeavours" approach the Deputy mentioned to an approach based on set tonnes of emissions and sequestrations. It is largely a zero-sum game in that we have to come in within the legally mandated budgetary ceilings. That will involve many trade-offs. We will have to decide where those trade-offs will take place and in what sectors is it most cost-efficient and socially acceptable to make these cuts in emissions.

I will pass over to Mr. Carroll to add to my response to the Deputy's other question as he may be over the detail a bit more than I am. We have the benefit of being able to work with a number of models that try to plot the various scenarios with regards to emissions, but also abatements. There are marginal abatement cost curves such as the Deputy mentioned. One was undertaken for the 2019 climate action plan. It formed the backbone of that plan. McKinsey did some work that fed into the updated plan in 2021. There are also other models throughout the system which look at issues in respect of energy and agriculture. They do not completely talk to one another, that is, they are not completely comparable. As part of my remit, I chair a research and modelling group. We are currently looking at all of those models and at the other layer of analysis that may need to be undertaken to join them up and layer them over one another in order to consider issues regarding the macroeconomic implications of the plan and the distributional effects the Deputy spoke about in respect of what the implications will be throughout-----