Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Farrell asked if the climate action plan can evolve and adapt. It can but the target does not change. We have to reach the 51% target. Every quarter we reassess the climate action plan's progress, as I said, and every year we do a new climate action plan. We are changing the plan all the time, with regard to the implementation steps, but not the goal.

On mining, we are trying to move from a society based on taking things out of the ground, building things with them and then disposing of those things afterwards towards a circular economy. However, we are not there yet. We are dependent on mobile phones, laptops and other such products, many of which use rare earth metals.

We need to ensure those valuable products are not being disposed of and we can retain the rare metals they use without having to extract them again. I understand the Deputy is referring to prospecting licences rather than extraction licences, which are a very different thing.

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