Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Ms Donnelly.

I worked with her when I was Minister and she is absolutely a correct selection for the role she is playing. I wish her very well in what is a critical task.

I have several questions. Ireland has been remarkably successful in its ICT transformation and becoming a smart economy, and that increasingly seems to be the direction of travel. We have also been remarkably successful in having our food sector catch up to be a significant international player and that has helped us through the recession. There is a sense out there that people are now saying we need to curb very crudely both the growth of ICT and the associated data centres and the food sector. It strikes me that this is a dangerous path to go. We have invested a lot of time and effort in trying to establish a foothold in these sectors and, in my view, with the help of the Climate Change Advisory Council, we have to find a way of protecting those leads while we address climate. I would be interested to hear Ms Donnelly shed light on that.

My second question is in regard to the measures being proposed. I know the Climate Change Advisory Council proposes measures and the Government is independent in selecting what it does. It is said that about 60% of the measures pay for themselves and the other 40% do not. I heard Ms Donnelly say that the Climate Change Advisory Council sets an outer limit of €2,000 per tonne but how does it select or how does it advise the Government or the Oireachtas to select? Is it that we look for the least expensive? Is it that we look for the areas where it is easiest to mobilise investment? Is it that we look for areas where there are tried and tested policy tools that will work? It seems to me that what we have to do is to take a punt on policy tools. While the Climate Change Advisory Council does not want to enter into the political battle lines that are raging around data centres or carbon pricing, it needs to give us some guidance as to how we choose policy tools for the good of everyone.

On a last point, when compared to the plan I was involved in putting together, the big areas where new ambition is set out are in regard to the rewetting of bogs, district heating, taking carbon out of construction materials, diversifying land use, biomethane and afforestation, where the ambition has been there but the reality has not materialised. Can Ms Donnelly guide us on what policy tools we need to be adopting in some of these new and ambitious areas? They seem to be relatively untested and it would be good to see what work the Climate Change Advisory Council is doing in those new areas.