Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 25 June 2025
Committee on European Union Affairs
Sustainable Development Goals: Discussion
2:00 am
Mr. Oisín Coghlan:
I will answer on climate fines. The range is from €8 billion to €26 billion with current policies, or from €3 billion or €4 billion to €12 billion if we improve our policies. There are two dimensions to this: what the European Commission might do and why we should be doing the things anyway. On the European Commission side, we all tend to use the word “fines”, but these are not actually fines levied by the Commission. Therefore, it is not up to the Commission whether they are imposed. Rather, the existing regime means we would have to buy credits from countries that are overperforming. If it depended on whether von der Leyen and other Commissioners felt they wanted to go after Ireland, there might be some political wrangling, but the credits will have to be bought under the existing system unless there is a whole change of system, which seems unlikely.
I think we will face fines if we do not act. The Commission will come out with new proposals for 90% reductions by 2040. Despite all the noise we are hearing, the general direction of travel is not changing. We should be getting on with them anyway because it is better to spend the money on investing in warmer homes, cleaner air, lower fuel bills and less fossil fuels than on fines or compliance costs. I had better let others in on the other ones. I would like to come back to NGOs and civil society at some point.
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