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

Correct me if I am wrong, and my officials will be able to do so, but I think it was roughly in June last year when we got a detailed sense of how far and how big the gap was on LULUCF. Last summer, then, we were faced with having to set sectoral emissions ceilings. The choice could have been to put something in which was just completely without any foundation of policy or scientific analysis, or to do what we did, which was to admit the problem and be upfront on it, be extremely clear about the scale of the gap and state that further work would need to be done because it was not possible to give an immediate and accurate assessment of the best approach to take. I stand by that decision. We will go to court and argue that we believe this was the right approach to take.

I do not for one minute doubt the ambition, motivation or correctness of the position of Professor Sweeney, Professor McMullin or others. Collectively, we have to deliver the climate targets to which we are committed. I believe, however, that it would be better done by spending this year assessing in detail what this means. I say this because we are also in a democratic, constitutional republic where we do not just operate by fiat.We must have the support of the Oireachtas. If we were to say we were just going to click our fingers and solve this problem by closing a whole swathe of industry here or shutting down a whole sector of our society there or use some other mechanism to deliver the reduction, I do not think that would be either constitutionally or democratically correct. I also do not think it would be achievable. We must live within the reality of our political world of getting support, consensus and a majority in the Oireachtas to agree to what needs to be done. Sometimes, this requires time being spent generating the analysis, sharing it, assessing it and then setting policy positions. This is what is happening as we speak.