Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The senior Minister had an opportunity in the budget to deliver some type of a green budget and now we are talking about a whole of Government action plan for which the Minister does not seem to have any funding and if he is to get funding for it, it will have to be approved by this House. Our Parliamentary Budget Office, in one of its many excellent reports, has reported on climate change. There is grave concern that we have missed our targets in 2016 and 2017 and we will miss the target for this year. It appears we could be facing fines ranging from €65 million to €130 million per percent of the 2020 target that we miss. The Minister of State's Department has quantified this, in general, as a possible fine of €600 million, which is an astonishing figure of a fine we could face in 2020. The report, to which I referred, shows we are ranked second last among the EU nations in our mitigation plan's performance.

The Government seems to have done almost nothing by comparison with countries like Sweden and many of our other European partners to address this. The Government had an opportunity to address this in the area of transport in budget 2019 but it did not want to know about it. It has not taken any of the steps set out in regard to agriculture or aviation. The Government will be handing the new Government that will be formed following the next general election a fierce problem to address in terms of climate action.

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