Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The point I was making is that is not what will happen. There will have to be a reallocation. There is a process. We have set out what we know and think is possible in each of the sectoral areas - we learn by doing - in agriculture, in transport, in terms of how we can promote public transport. Even within that, there will be variations - we learn by doing - but we know we will need approximately a 25% reduction in the demand for transport. We know we have tools to use like space reallocation as one of the ways of achieving that but we still have to achieve it. The delivery of the mechanisms is going to be key. We did not know how we would close the gap that opened up in scientific knowledge at a latter stage in this process. It was appropriate in those circumstances to say we were not going to give a back-of-the-envelope response, or a guess, without having any clear technological understanding as to how to close this gap or what the implications might be for other sectors. We said, appropriately, that we would have to do further research and analysis as to how to close that gap, and will do so as soon as possible. In the meantime, we need to get on with the measures we know we can deliver and that should be the focus of our approach while we do the reallocation.