Ms Meabh Gallagher:

For the first programme of carbon budgets, the primary constraint on that proposal from 2021 out to 2030 was the climate Act target of a 51% reduction in emissions. For this proposal, the council is looking at the post-2030 period. The primary constraint on the budgets this time is the overall objective of the national climate objective and climate neutrality, which the council has been explicit in its interpretation as temperature neutrality and the achievement of emissions reductions so that Ireland is no longer contributing to global warming. For the first programme, the Paris test was carried out as a simple scaling of Ireland's contribution to global warming. This time around, we have had access to a more nuanced analysis using these reduced-complexity climate models, which allows for a more accurate assessment of Ireland's historical contribution to global warming in the first instance.

It also includes F-gases and aerosols, which were more poorly represented in the first analysis. As Ms Donnelly was outlining, it also allows us to explore the impacts of emissions reductions across the different main greenhouse gases and look at that temperature impact of early reductions in methane emissions. Finally, this approach has allowed us to take account of and consider the context of global emissions pathways and specifically take account of global emissions pathways that would constrain global warming to 1.5°C in line with the most ambitious element of the Paris temperature goal.