Dr. Matthew Crowe:

I would like to answer the questions asked by Deputy Bríd Smith. I am glad she referred to our graph. We consider it to be a particularly important graph because it is stark. It shows the scale of the challenge. It also shows the reversal of the trend that existed, for whatever reason, in the period before the current period. The point I want to make is that the EPA will continue to report annually on the emissions inventories and the projections. As Dr. Cotter mentioned, we will use verifiable information when we are developing the projections. It is absolutely crucial for the things that are set out in the plan and in the national development plan to be implemented.

As those plans start to evolve and develop, they will then find their way into our projections. Obviously, the obverse, if they do not happen, is that they will not find their way into our projections and the projections will continue to portray the kind of picture that is presented in that figure.

We are required by the Environmental Protection Agency Act 1992 to produce a state of the environment report every four years. The most recent report was in 2016. We have started work on the next one which will be for 2020. In the 2016 report, we looked in some detail at energy, transport and agriculture. We included in the submission to the committee a summary of the key messages from those chapters for those three particular sectors. In terms of the provision of a roadmap for where to go with all this, those chapters provide good information as to what we need to do in Ireland to head in the right direction here.

Collaboration is hugely important in this area. It is significant that all the State agencies are collaborating and working together on this. We do work in other areas, for example, the Water Framework Directive, which is only looking at water. It is complex enough to get everybody to collaborate in such a space. This is covering the entire economy and society and it is very complex. The collaborative structures are being put in place. They take time to bed down. It is about building the structures that enable the different Departments and agencies to work together on a common goal.

Deputy Dooley asked what we can do in the shorter term in this regard. It is difficult to see what can be done up to 2020 that will make a major impact by 2020 merely because it is now the middle of 2018 and it is not that far away. The type of things we all need to focus on are, for example, changing the way that we make electricity. If one looks at the key message for energy in our submission, currently, fossil fuels provide approximately 90% of Ireland's energy. That is for everything, including electricity for housing and for transport - the entire energy system. We have a long way to go to get to the point where we have a decarbonised system but if we can figure out how to make electricity in a different way that is not dependent on fossil fuels, that then opens the door for a lot of other things. For example, if we all bought electric cars, which we would plug in, the electricity charging those cars would not be generated by fossil fuels whereas at present a significant proportion of it is. That is centrally important to getting the transition right.

The second point, which Deputy Eamon Ryan mentioned and with which we would agree with, is about doing as much as we can, and more if we can, in the area of improving the efficiency of our homes because we all live in a home. Everybody lives somewhere.