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

I agree with what was said earlier about information services for the Oireachtas. As I said earlier, the Parliamentary Budgetary Office would be an appropriate vehicle. There is also the legal office here and I am sure that the Senator has had recourse to it on climate issues and so on. There are also different committees.

As an aside, one of the most interesting developments at the moment is what is happening in Brussels and Strasbourg. One of the things that we tend not to do is follow the legislative process in the European Union but I believe that there are 22 pieces of legislation in the Fit for 55 package. So there is an incredible breadth of legislative change coming because Europe is doubling down and betting everything on this green transition. One of the things that we need to do is make sure that we keep in close contact with our European colleagues and maybe bring them in to understand what is happening with the Fit for 55 legislative package because that is the most significant. There are also a lot of resources within the European Parliament that we might be able to tap into to inform us.

Certainly with regard to the role of local authorities, State companies and others in the transport sector and elsewhere, I absolutely agree with the Senator and think that local authorities are key. I have travelled around the country. Last week, I was in the Country Louth to meet members of Louth County Council to make this point and listen to what they intend to do. All bodies, not just Louth County Council, need to shift away from thinking, "We have a climate action plan which is about our emissions", which might be 1% of the total emissions within the county. They have a key role in everyone's emissions, a key role within the law and a key role particularly in areas like transport, waste management and water.

They have a critical role, as do State companies. People may not have noticed but a very significant Government decision was made earlier this summer on the role of public companies, State companies and others in respect of the climate agenda in all their agencies, ranging from the library service, Coillte - it could be semi-State companies of every hue - whereby they must incorporate our climate emission targets in their corporate, board and management decisions. That paper is available in terms of the roles and responsibilities of public bodies on climate change. It was agreed and published this summer and very much sets the direction of where they need to go.

With regard to LULUCF, doing this land use review does not mean we stop what is already happening. There are significant measures in the 2022 climate action plan in rewetting of bogs, management of forestry and so on and they will be intensified in the 2023 plan that will come out in November. It is not as if we wait 18 months for the review to be completed. It is happening and needs to be and will be accelerated in the upcoming plan.

On those three energy elements that were agreed as part of the setting of sectoral ceilings, it is true there were concerns at the latter stages. It was in response as much as anything else to the concerns of people asking how, if agriculture was not going to the upper end of its ceiling of 30%, do we close some of the gap. It was appropriate in my mind for us to look to the energy sector for an answer to that question. It was not as if the work had not been done on this. We had been considering it in quite some detail, for example, the switch from a 5 GW target to a 7 GW target in offshore energy. That was inspired not just to close the gap but because we know from the way this is evolving very quickly that we want to be in the space where we are encouraging facilitation of the production of green hydrogen or ammonia or both and are giving a signal of intent in that regard by stating that our strategic approach will be to facilitate that. We knew we wanted to do this anyway when it came to offshore energy. Similarly, on the development of 5.7 TWh of anaerobic digestion and natural gas, again it was not the first time we looked at this. We have been thinking about this extensively for the guts of almost one and a half decades. Most European countries have such significant amounts of gas from anaerobic digestion. However, it was appropriate in my mind to connect it to what we are doing in agriculture. As anaerobic digestion is ramped up, the grass will go to that process rather than necessarily to feeding cattle. As it will also be a way of managing the waste slurry from our farming, it is connected.

The 3 GW of solar ambition is similarly connected.Again, that was not something we just considered in this process. I believe EirGrid will publish its new Shaping Our Electricity Future plan in the coming weeks. I expect it will include that, because much background research analysis had already been done showing that we needed to have that appropriate raising of ambition. Those three new energy elements help us on the climate side but they were not just formulated in response to the climate sectoral emission ceilings. They were en routein any case, in my mind as Minister with responsibility for energy. I am confident and comfortable that they are the right policy measures, not just for climate but for energy policy.

Lastly, as the Chair said, backup storage is a separate issue and it is separate in a number of different ways. First, the timeline for it is more medium-term, that is, to the later part of this decade. It does not connect to the immediate energy security challenge we have but is a wider medium-term energy security issue. We will publish a paper later this week that will set out the options and analysis carried out by CEPA. I absolutely agree that what we have to do must take into account climate emissions. The trilemma in energy is optimising for the environment, for energy security and for competitiveness. Therefore, we must make sure any proposal for energy storage and gas storage does not burst our climate emissions targets, which might be good for a corporate project but not for the State. Similarly, I agree with the Senator very much that we have to consider the State's strategic interest in having a strategic store of gas upon which we can call immediately.

We will see the paper on Thursday. I think it will steer us towards strategic storage of gas which does not blow our climate budget, which gives us greater security, which we can deliver in the medium-term timeframe and which is not only in the corporate interest.