Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I indicated to Deputy Curran earlier, the position as of today is that, cumulatively, we will have missed our 2013 to 2020 targets by 5%. After the crash, we looked grand but once the recovery started, we began to go seriously off-track. The more worrying projection is that in 2020 we will be 95% off our targeted starting point. We will be 1% down on 2005 emissions; we were supposed to be 20% down. That is a bad starting point for the period 2020 to 2030. That is why the Government has given me sanction to go and draw up a whole-of-Government approach.

I agree with Deputy Neville that we will have to set sectoral targets. That will be difficult because there are all sorts of different sectors. There is the public service itself, which I believe should be leading by example; commerce, industry and agriculture; and, on the more domestic side, waste, transport, energy and residential. Each of these sectors will have to make a contribution. The most effective contribution from different sectors will depend on the ease with which they can adjust and the cost of that adjustment.

I believe the suggestion in Deputy Neville's question is correct that we need to identify targets across the sectors and the sort of policy tools that would deliver those targets. There will be an element of trying to work out what are the most effective tools and what targets can we realistically expect to achieve but we need to set stretched targets in every one of the sectors that I mentioned.

See this speech in context