Mr. Louis Duffy:

One significant change the climate action plan requirement has brought about for the local authority sector is to expand our role in examining exactly where we stand and what the targets should be. Through the CARO, we are looking at putting together a framework for the appointment of specialists to look at carbon baselines both in our own activities and in those right across the counties.

In that way we can start looking at where action can be taken. It has been said that some of our local authorities might meet their 2030 targets for carbon reduction by some of the actions taken such as the LED shift and the shift to electricity as a source of heating power for our buildings and that, combined with the greening of the network, would make us reach our targets. However, that presumes nothing happens or there is no development. We are a growing country and there are challenges and every additional industry and every additional head of population we have will bring about a carbon demand. What we must get to is that situation where we can look at what the sources of the existing carbon load are and then what are the additionals. We will have to make some national decisions on prioritising what actions we will take.

It is certainly a very complex area. It is one where there are three different levels of carbon assessment that can be carried out at the moment. The first tier of that is something we will be able to do initially but a lot of the information is not available for going to tiers 2 and 3, but that will have to be the basis of the establishment of our first climate action plans. Based on those we will be looking, as I said, not only at our own sector and the areas we can directly control but we will also be providing information on sectors we must influence or sectors we may not have any control over at all and they will have to be brought to a national forum that will make some decisions on that as to where we take the action.

Much is said about agriculture and what it can and cannot achieve. All of that will be in the context of a desire for that particular industry to grow and develop. Other areas of activity in the State will also have to be considered and balanced against our needs. For example, at the moment there is a Government policy document on electric vehicles, EVs, that has been published for consultation. One of the areas we are trying to look at in that is the provision of EV chargers at transport hubs and park-and-ride locations so people living in rural areas who may not have access to public transport would be able to park their vehicles at a transport hub and be able to access cities and towns while charging their car and would be able to make the journey home. There are a lot of intersectoral discussions that will have to take place and in many ways, the apportionment of the targets will have to be reviewed when we look at how successful we are in the first stages of making those improvements.