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

I look forward to working with the Deputy and bringing her expertise into play on where we go from here.

There was an informal meeting of the European Council of environment ministers yesterday. Frans Timmermans, the vice-president of the European Commission, set out the approach the Commission is planning to take this autumn and into the new year under the German Presidency. The German minister also outlined that. We hope to see and be part of a major acceleration in ambition across the European Union to help the Union play its part in meeting the Paris climate goals. In that regard I expect to have a further phone call with the vice-president of the Commission, tomorrow I think, to set out our plans for progressing the NECP. I understand data have already been submitted setting out the emissions reduction that could come from the existing climate action plan.

That may well provide a baseline for our contribution but we will immediately switch to working with the European Commission. By the end of September they are looking to do an assessment of what increased ambition might be possible across different nation states, taking into account those baseline national energy and climate plan, NECP, submissions. We look to have climate legislation in the autumn that would commit the European Union towards a net zero 2050 target in CO2 reductions, with a new effort-sharing mechanism to show how the EU as a whole would achieve that by 2030. If this is agreed by the European Union, which I hope it can be by the end of this year, it will lead to the development of a new NECP, which will meet and match the newer higher target that the programme for Government commits to. That is the process I see us working on with the European Union to deliver higher ambition. It has to involve engagement with the Oireachtas joint committee, the special Cabinet sub-committee on climate action, biodiversity and the environment, and all actors in Irish society. This must be central to the new national economic plan. The approach I look to take will put in our baseline what the climate action plan shows, we will immediately start working with the European Commission on how we set out a higher ambition target and get agreement in the European Council for that, and then deliver the NECP, which will deliver on that sort of commitment. That is the approach I am thinking of taking.

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