Professor Barry McMullin:

I will take this but Professor Daly may want to add as well. "No" is the simple answer. It is important to emphasise that what we are talking about here is what Ireland is doing under its domestic legislation. Ireland's domestic legislation is not replicated in other European countries. They have legislation but there are different approaches. It is legitimate for a country, as the Paris Agreement framework provides for bottom-up decision making, for better or for worse. We could argue whether that is the most effective basis for global co-operation but that is the framework laid down by the Paris Agreement, namely that individual countries - parties to the Paris Agreement - undertake in good faith to act and to put their cards on the table as to what they judge to be their fair share contribution. Ireland has chosen to enshrine that in the legislation, particularly in the 2021 Act. On this question mark about assessing the Paris Agreement compliance with that, in the first round of carbon budgets an approach was taken using this so-called GWP* mechanism, which certainly at first sight seems to run contrary to established norms in the way the different countries report under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC. You can do both things. You can report to the UNFCCC using the standard way but for domestic purposes - if it makes sense - you may use other things that are derived from or are a different representation of the emissions number. It is not automatically a bad thing to do and in any case the council in this second round has moved away from that GWP* mechanism. The metric, if you want to call it that, for aggregation of gases is not really at issue. What is at issue is how best to assess Ireland's contribution. The council has presented something that kind of tries to ride two horses that do not go together. One is this temperature neutrality idea that Professor Daly has commented on and has explained very eloquently, which is that temperature neutrality on its own is, at best, a measure of stabilisation of contribution to temperature. One could, however, stabilise at completely unlivable temperatures so it is clear that in and of itself, this is inadequate. One has to look at temperature contribution. A standard accounting mechanism, particularly for methane, is not actually a good proxy for temperature contribution. In the specific circumstances where one is looking at temperature contribution it is appropriate to use different methodologies, but that in no way undermines the standard accounting processes or standard reporting obligations.