Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to come back to comments made by Senator Pauline O'Reilly and address the political charge that was made. I will correct the record in that regard, if I can. It is not correct to say that only one party failed to offer a position in advance of the announcement of the sectoral emissions ceilings. I would suggest that two parties in government did not offer a position and their only public articulations related to the agriculture sector and asserted that its ceiling would be as low as possible. Other parties did not articulate a position. It is acknowledged by the Minister and others that documents central to the decision-making for sectoral emission ceilings were not publicly available.

We will continue to pursue the publication of those documents. On a broader note, the debate was entirely focused on agricultural ceilings, which are only a small piece of the really important puzzle. Adding to that Punch-and-Judy stuff is not helpful. We have a role to play here so I will leave it at that.

I wanted to ask about the delivery of these sectoral emissions ceilings because past experience shows that we have set targets and missed them. I am concerned that the governance structure is not there to mainstream these measures across Departments and government. Even in respect of the idea of excluding, we have not been able to get the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to appear before this committee. We have struggled to get the Department to appear before this committee. Sorry, we did not ask the Minister; we asked the Department. We have certainly struggled to get the Department to appear before the committee. A number of speakers have commented on the important role of the Minister with regard to this. I certainly get a sense that there is insufficient engagement across portfolios, Ministries and Departments. I know this issue has been raised previously in terms of whether this should be led by the Department of the Taoiseach, for example. We have heard that from different stakeholders. I have a concern that the reporting mechanism concerning sectoral emissions ceilings seems to be to this committee only. Other committees such as those dealing with transport, agriculture and housing need to deal with the challenges of emissions reductions as part and parcel of their work. We have these budgets, as agreed by Government. What are the governance structures that will mainstream the job of delivering on them? How will the Minister ensure responsibility to the Oireachtas on the part of individual Ministers? I would suggest that it needs to be broader than coming to this committee on a 12-monthly basis.