Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On land use, the Minister has not set a definitive target and the measure of land use change seems to have dramatically increased. We are heading on an unchanged policy to, I think, 11 million tonnes of emissions from land use. Will there be a washback on to the other sectors if it proves that we cannot deliver? The EU has talked of us having a target of 3.7 million tonnes for 2030, which when compared with 11 million tonnes will be a truly massive adjustment. If we cannot meet the target will, it mean a washback into the other sectors with the targets that we have now banked on having to be revised?

I will not repeat what was said about our discussion yesterday with representatives of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Are there plans to set targets for embodied carbon at any point? I acknowledge that it is not a requirement of the Paris Agreement.

It seems that public sector leadership is particularly important and I know that the Minister has said this is a difficult area. Is there a basline for where we are at today compared with where we would hope to be with public procurement? The EPA has some sort of a measure. Is there an agreed measure of where we are at, where we want to get to and what tools need to be changed to make public procurement take account of lifetime impact and all of those things that we know about?

I strongly believe that the circular economy approach has much more potential to build momentum for change in different sectors throughout the supply chain than relying solely on climate targets. The landmark Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022 provides for strategies in each of the key sectors. Is there buy-in by different Departments to create circular economy strategies in food, construction, retail, white goods and so on? Real momentum could be built that would have a more collaborative approach than what tends to be finger pointing, in some of the climate debates, at data centres or farmers and pretending that it is not our choices that to some degree create these problem sectors. The circular economy looks at our choices as well as those of producers and right through to how we dispose of material.

Under the climate measure, the impact of waste is tiny and I think its impact is 1 million tonnes. The reality is that 90% of construction waste is not being recovered. That is a massive loss of carbon by any measure but it does not get caught in our approach. The appeal, at least for me, is that the circular economy strategy can be leaned on as a way of driving some of the changes we need to make in these sectors and will make it easier to get consensus about changes in those sectors. I will leave it at that as I know lots of other people want to comment.