Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

From the response I am led to believe things are actually worse than I thought. We are nowhere near where we should be in tackling climate change. The Minister has said the national mitigation plan is a living document. It is a dead document. I do not mean to be negative, but we have reached the carbon cliff I feared when the climate action legislation was being passed through the House three years ago. The targets included in the plan are not binding. We are not even going to make a 2% reduction when we should be reducing carbon output by 20% by 2020. The Minister and his officials are now saying we will hopefully reach this point by 2030. The facts are that agricultural emissions are projected to increase by 45% by 2020. Transport emissions will increase by 10% to 12%. The SEAI warns that the continued use of coal, peat and oil means that the carbon intensity is 32% higher than in other OECD countries. Where is the energy mix? I do not hear any mention of the replacement of fossil fuels in the Minister's answer. Will he lay out what will displace fossil fuels?

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