Mr. Tony Murphy:

A lot of the reaction has related to the fact there was so great a dependence in Europe, rather than in Ireland specifically, on Russia. We look at the pan-European situation. We are auditors and we just say it as we see it. We highlight the risks. We hope it will help feed into the debate, and while we may be seen as overly critical or unrealistic, as the Deputy suggested, I do not think that is the case. If the Commission sets a target and says it will achieve something by a certain date, all we do is present the situation as it is now and advise that we do not see how it will get there. It can then adapt the targets, which is probably more difficult politically, or it may have to change its approach or action plans. We do not give any additional emphasis to checking expenditure because it is green, but if the Commission tells us it is spending 20% of the EU budget on green-related actions and we find it has not, it is fair game that we would report that. We are auditors at the end of the day and we follow legal and compliance rules.

On the strategy, I fully agree but I think that in the new Commission there will be a greater focus on crisis management, for instance, or crisis preparedness, if we can call it that, so it will have to build in this flexibility to be able to adjust, whether that is to hydrogen or biofuels. We are saying that, based on the current situation in biofuels or even in electric vehicles, we are again creating a dependence on third parties, even if it is a different third party. It relates to, for instance, cars coming from China, raw materials for batteries coming from the Congo or whatever it might be. The big phrase in the Commission at the moment is "strategic autonomy" and the EU wants to be strategically autonomous.

Again, these are very good intentions, but how are we going to do that? We see the conflict between all these initiatives, on the one hand, and the impact on industrial policy, agricultural policy or whatever it might be, on the other. It is a balancing act but we are not the policymakers, thankfully, as I said earlier. I would not like to try to legislate in this area. It is very complicated and I am not saying it is easy. We are just looking at what has been said or promised and we are asking how we are doing relative to that. That is the best we can do.