Mr. Brian Carroll:

On the issue of what happens over time with future Governments, the Bill does not bind any particular Government to pursue the 2050 objective. It binds the State which is this and all future Governments. It requires the State to produce plans and strategies consistent with the 2050 target.

It also provides for carbon budgets to be brought forward that are consistent with achieving the 2050 objective. Once the carbon budgets are laid before the Oireachtas and fully accepted the first two carbon budgets to 2050 are to be complied with. As Deputy Bruton pointed out the Oireachtas will have an opportunity to vote on this in the coming months.

As for the consequences of not complying with them, the accountability is in the first instance to the Oireachtas. Ministers will need to appear annually before the committee and additional measures will need to be brought forward to make up any shortfall in meeting the budgets.

The budgets are a way of embedding the hard target, which Senator Higgins is trying to talking about, in legislation. They come through the budgets which can be revised in the exceptional circumstance of there being some sort of new obligation that requires them to be possibly further tightened. On that balance between having something very locked down and sufficient flexibility, if one puts a particular target for 2030 into primary legislation now but science dictates that, through our international obligations, it has to be a more stringent target in the coming years of the decade, one will obviously have to amend the primary legislation to reflect that. There is already a mechanism through the carbon budgets to ensure that one can reflect any further or heightened ambition that may come down the line through a revision of those carbon budgets, if there are new obligations or changes in climate science. The Bill is very strong in that regard.