Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The strategic environmental report recognises that it is strategic in nature and is concerned with broad objectives. It is not at project level like the NDP. There is a completely different context if one goes for project level. I do not think the European institutions will accept it. Three months after the NPF was agreed, the EPA publicly acknowledged that it does not have faintest idea of its climate implications. Any assessment done since indicates that it will result in an increase rather than a reduction in emissions, particularly in the key sectors of transport and agriculture. We are going into a European negotiating process which requires us to cut our emissions by at least 30% to 40% and, in that context, the European institutions are going to find that we have got the whole process wrong again. We got it wrong in the early part of the previous decade when our strategic planning framework was completely divorced from the NDP at that time and the exact same thing has happened again. Do the witnesses not agree that there is a real divergence between the NPF and the NDP in terms of our environmental results and objectives? The NPF is on the right track but the NDP ignores it.