Ms Marie Donnelly:

The work we did with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council was extremely interesting. We took a series of directives, legislation as they are, that Ireland is committed to and governed by at a European level where we have targets to achieve. We projected forward where we are likely to be in 2030 for each of those pieces of legislation. By the way, to go back to Senator Noonan, we did not include the energy efficiency directive, which is another one that will have a target with a compliance fine on it. We estimated what it would be to pay the compliance fines. The figures are very variable because we are trying to project what prices might be five years from now and prices will be influenced by very many things, not least of which is scarcity of supply. One would be what the cost of carbon will be in the ETS. I will not say that is predictable but there is certainly a trajectory there that allows us to build in those numbers. The second part is that in order to comply, we will need to buy credits from other member states.

Other member states also have tough targets to achieve, so the availability of credits is likely to be very low. That means they could be very expensive. We did it when we failed to meet our 2020 targets. We spent €150 million buying credits from Denmark and Estonia. These credits probably will not be as available in 2030 so are likely to be much more expensive. That is why the numbers are quite variable. I think €28 billion is at the outer edge. I hope it is. At this stage we just know it is going to be a lot of money. Will we have to pay some of this money in advance? We will not for these targets because they kick in in 2030 and it will be 2032 before we have the actual numbers. However, we must remember that we have still not achieved our 2020 targets. Even though we bought the first year off, we will still be confronted with the failure to achieve our 2020 targets until such time as we achieve them and we are not there yet.