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

I will explore another issue that seems to have come up in a number of contributions, namely, the ignoring of the circular economy dimension of this. This strikes a chord with me. From an Irish perspective, looking at our emissions, from a production point of view, people will immediately focus on agriculture as they are 40%. However, our consumption emissions are 75% higher, and we will suddenly see a whole load of other things looming into sight, such as why we spend so much on vehicles that are beyond our needs or why we do not occupy our homes in a more efficient way. We get into a whole other dimension. Is this partly at the heart of a rather narrow focus, which has come from the Paris Agreement because it needs to start somewhere? I presume choices are made in some sectors that lock us into certain patterns of use. We are now trying to retrofit and retro-cure those.

I would be interested to hear from the experts how we could adopt a more circular approach. The witnesses from Amber Research mentioned the vulnerability to supply chains that are beyond our reach and are geopolitically and otherwise vulnerable. How do we adopt a better approach as we create this framework? It seems to me that by narrowing down on production, without looking at the whole supply chain, the choice of materials and the consumption patterns, we are missing a beat and we are only looking at the problem in a partial way. As they used to say in good exam questions, "Discuss."