Mr. Frank Maughan:

To answer the Chair's question on mitigation plan measures, it is important to recall that when the mitigation plan was published in July of last year, it set out a range of measures which were already in place across Government for four separate sectors - electricity, the built environment, transport and agriculture - to address greenhouse gas emissions. It also identified a number of other measures on which work was continuing. In total, there were just over 70 measures, supported by more than 100 separate actions which were identified as necessary work to take forward for the consideration of individual measures. The short answer is that measures were in place. Some measures have subsequent announcements relating to them. For example, there have been announcements about the development of the support scheme for renewable heat, the renewable electricity support scheme and smart metering. The mitigation plan reflected a certain point in time and the position across Government then. It was characterised as a living document by the Minister. That very much continues to be the case. I bring back to the committee's attention the annual transition statement which was laid before the Houses in December of last year, which presented an update on the implementation of the measures in the mitigation plan across the system. It reflects, as I mentioned, updates which had been announced by the relevant Ministers and also updates where announcements from the budget acted to enhance and expand existing measures. That will be an ongoing annual, iterative process for the expansion of measures already in place or the announcement of new measures.

I will address Deputy Dooley's question on costs of meeting targets. As Mr. Manley has mentioned about the issue of compliance costs with renewables directives, there is a separate set of compliance issues around our targets for the non-emissions trading system, ETS, sector. Similar to renewables, the question is where we will land in 2020. Unlike the renewables directive, the legislation governing the non-ETS sector has individual targets for each year of the period from 2013 to 2020. Between 2013 and 2016, our emissions have been under our targets so we have been able to bank a certain amount of excess allowances to carry forward into future years. We know based on EPA projections and published inventory data that, notwithstanding what we have been able to bank, there will continue to be a shortfall. It estimates, based on current policy implementation, a shortfall of between 11 million and 13 million tonnes, cumulatively, over those eight years. Those projections will continue to be updated annually by the EPA. The next projections are due to be published in March or April of this year. That will allow us to refine further our assessment of our shortfall between now and 2020. The other part of the equation is the price. Unlike the renewable space, it is probably fair to say that there is not a market on which we can identify the price on which we may end up purchasing allowances. The point is that the EU 28 are expected to succeed in reducing their emissions well below their targets. Cumulatively, the European Environment Agency estimates that we could see a potential surplus of €1 billion in allowances in the system overall. With that level of surplus, we would expect the prices to be quite low. It is only when we start to speak to potential seller countries that we get a sense of how much they are willing to sell their allowances for.