Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. That was four pages of text but there was not a great amount of information in it. In light of the EPA report and the publication of its analysis, the elephant in the room today is the fact that the Government is not going to meet its climate targets. It is not going to meet the climate targets under the NECP or those relating to the Act. The EPA's analysis was exactly the same last year. This is the second year in a row in which the EPA's analysis has shown that even if the Government implements every single policy measure set out in the climate action plan in full, this will result in a 29% reduction as opposed to the 51% required. It is clear that the Government is failing to be ambitious enough in its policy and is failing to ensure that we have sufficient policies to meet our targets.

As I have said, this is the exact same analysis the EPA came out with last year. The Minister has had a year, and there has been another iteration of the climate action plan. In that year, however, he has not managed to lay out any policies that would result in even an additional 1% reduction in emissions. Will he please explain how that can be the case? I raised this matter in the Dáil with the Minister last year. At that point, I asked him to revise the climate action plan but he said that he would not, that it was an iterative process and that the climate action plan was in the process of being revised and would be published in December. That document is still not good enough. What is the Minister going to do to get down on paper the policies we need to meet our targets? We know that writing the policies down is the easy part. It is implementing them that is difficult. That is my first question. Will the Minister tell me and the committee what he is going to do to ensure that the Government is planning for that 51% reduction?