Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Fossil Fuels Divestment Bill seeks to amend the NTMA Acts to have the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund divest from fossil fuels. The Bill is a matter for the Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform. He informs me that to date there has been very constructive engagement with Deputy Thomas Pringle on the passage of the Private Members Bill. He has also informed me that it passed Committee Stage on 19 April. Given that it is a Private Members' Bill, Report Stage will be scheduled in Private Members’ time. Its scheduling is outside the Government's control.

Meeting Ireland's EU targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 2030 will be extremely challenging. The latest projections for greenhouse gas emissions, published by the EPA earlier today, indicate that emissions from those sectors of the economy covered by Ireland's 2020 targets might only be 1% below 2005 levels by 2020, despite a target that emissions should be 20% below their 2005 levels. This is deeply disappointing but not surprising, given the recent pace of economic growth and the consequent increases in emissions from the agriculture and transport sectors, in particular. The projected shortfall against our targets is further exacerbated by the constrained investment capacity in the past decade due to the economic crisis.

The legislative framework governing the European Union’s 2020 emissions reduction targets includes a number of flexibility mechanisms to enable member states to meet their annual emissions targets, including provisions to bank excess allowances to future years and trade allowances between member states. Using our banked emissions from the period to 2015, Ireland complies with its emissions reduction targets. However, our cumulative emissions are expected to exceed targets at end of the decade, which will result in a requirement to purchase additional allowances. While this purchasing requirement is not, at this stage, expected to be significant, further analysis will be required to quantify the likely costs involved in the light of the final amount and price of allowances required.

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