Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The new all-of-Government climate action plan due out in the next few weeks will, I am sure, morph into the national energy and climate action plan we have to put together for the European Commission. In carrying out the work of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action, certain things became clear. The first is that no climate assessment whatsoever was carried out in the formulation of the existing national development plan, Project Ireland 2040, which was only approved last June. The modelling which has been done since shows that even if all of the most optimistic projections in those plans were to be delivered, they would only result in one third of the level of emissions reductions we need by 2030. There is a gap of something like 100 million tonnes. The leaked version of the document featured in The Irish Times in recent days shows marginal change that will not really shift that gap. I do not understand how Government could be considering the continued use of oil and gas-fired boilers in new homes for the next six years. Their use needs to be ended sooner. The objective of increasing the number of refurbishments to 50,000 is welcome, but we do not have the workers to achieve it and, in itself, it would not close the gap we need to close. We need to close a gap of 100 million tonnes cumulatively in the non-emissions trading scheme sector between now and 2030. Will the first draft of the plan show on a per tonne basis, 1 million tonnes or 500,000 tonnes at a time, where exactly those real, realisable and realistic emissions will come from? That is what we need, not just PR but precise projections. Will that level of detail on where the actual emissions reductions up to 2030 will occur be included when that plan is published?

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