Mr. Brian Carroll:

I might start with the definition of climate neutrality in terms of how the EU has chosen to define it. It recognises that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, talks about bringing CO2 emissions to net zero by 2050 and non-CO2 gases in the following years to net zero. The EU has shown leadership by choosing an approach at EU level that involves bringing all greenhouse gases to net zero by 2050, including non-CO2 gases. In terms of governance, sanctions and the semester, what is envisaged is that if a member state is off course, the EU can make recommendations to the member state. If the member state decides not to act on the recommendations made to go back on course, it is then obliged to explain itself in due course. Regarding sanctions, the new regime must be fully designed between now and into the next one or two years. Legislative proposals will be on the table by 2021.

There are flexibilities. There are ways that that member states can purchase compliance. That is a cost and it is one that is funding mitigation elsewhere in the EU rather than in one's own country and that is where the productive investment is taking place. Those sort of flexibilities impose a cost on member states if they are not in a position to bring about compliance within their own jurisdiction.

On the emissions trading system, ETS, there are proposals on the table which we will need to analyse. In particular, there are proposals on the expansion of the ETS which talk about its role in transport and the built environment. The EU tables a number of propositions, one of which is that the ETS comes into one of those spaces but in parallel one still imposes targets on member states, so that one would still have both an ETS and an effort-type sharing regulation operating in those sectors.

Another proposal is to reduce the size of the non-ETS and have the ETS just operate itself with nothing else as to, potentially, transport and the built environment.

On agriculture, the EU has published its methane strategy but is also looking at bringing LULUCF and agriculture potentially into a single block so one would have the non-CO2greenhouse gases in a block with LULUCF and the creation of sinks.

Finally, on the just transition, each member state must prepare a just transition territorial plan for approval by the European Commission to access the funding. It must be prepared in accordance with EU rules, with the involvement of urban and other public authorities, economic and social partners and relevant bodies representing civil society, environmental partners and so forth. Ireland is in a phase at the moment where we are about to start a technical assistance-funded exercise to scope out the territory for the just transition plan and to do the preparatory work for it so that we can maximise the drawdown of funding in the coming years.