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

The targets are based on science, in respect of what was agreed in Paris in 2015, as well on what has been further agreed on by science since. If we do not, as an example of a developed country, halve our emissions this decade and get to net zero by 2050, then we risk going over certain tipping points where climate change will become a runaway phenomenon. It is impossible to know exactly where these tipping points are and the choice made in the context of the Paris agreement of the 1.5°C target, to not allow the global average temperature increase to go above that level, gives us not the certainty but the probability that we may avoid this runaway scenario. This is, though, based on the targets set.

Even with all the challenges that come with this, especially in a country with a growing population, a rapidly growing economy and the emissions that come from some of the solutions, as the Deputy said, in the context of building a railway system, which involves emissions in its own right, we must still make this change. We have committed to it our national law but we have also seen this being committed to in European law. We are not going to go to the EU and ask it to count Ireland out of this green transition. Equally, if the Deputy were to look at many of the large industrial players in his own constituency, the big foreign direct, FDI, investment companies in east Cork, these are also committing to this climate target. They will want to work with countries and governments similarly committed. We do not, therefore, have an option. We must go for this. It is hugely challenging but it is the right thing to do.

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