Ms Laura Burke:

I cannot see any additional actions that could take place between 2019 and 2020 that would lead to Ireland reaching its compliance targets. We have to look now at 2030. At the minute, we are seeing a 13% reduction by 2030 in a best case scenario, with additional measures, meaning that we would be exceeding our compliance obligations by 7 million tonnes. This means that around 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide or equivalent will have to be made up in that time period. We are saying that we have to look across all sectors and decide where those 7 million tons can be made up, be it in transport or agriculture or another area. We have to look at the big hitters. Transport and agriculture make up around 70% of the non-ETS emissions. Therefore, we have to look at those areas. Residential and other areas could also be looked at. The key is the all-of-Government climate plan that is being prepared, which should look at addressing that gap.

Through the Exchequer funding we get, we fund environmental research which then supports potential changes that can be made, for example, the potential for carbon sequestration.