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

We have to look at ways of leveraging private investment as well as public investment. I know this is close to the heart of the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth. There are two areas with opportunities for fresh thinking. One is carbon farming, where we pay farmers for the sort of thing we need to do, such as rewetting and reducing livestock herding on some of these drained organic soils. It offers a significant opportunity but the incentives are not in place. There are other examples.

The second matter is the circular economy and I know the Minister of State has done much work to contribute to that. The plan emphasises that there is much more to the circular economy than reducing waste, which tends to be the focus of the strategy at the moment. It is about the whole design of the supply chain. We all have responsibility, including those who design buildings, those who occupy them, those who produce food and those who consume. The ESRI has shown that we have 75% more emissions if we look at our consumption patterns than if we look solely at our production patterns. We throw away stuff with greater frequency. We buy expensive, high-end materials that we could use much more efficiently. We need much more efficient construction sites, use of our vehicle fleet, and so on. That is where we need to find ways to deliver. There is a new opportunity in those areas and we need to tap into them. We still need to see sectoral plans, which are crucial. I think we can deliver a much less adversarial approach to meeting our targets if we look at this through the prism of the circular economy rather than pointing the finger at data centres or farmers, which we are all too familiar with hearing people speak about. We need to change how we manage our whole supply chain if we want to achieve this. I get frustrated with people who want to find one scapegoat to blame for all the challenges faced.

There must be genuine commitment by the public sector to lead. I do not see it yet in procurement or its patterns. We can only have a call to arms to the wider population if the public sector is seen to lead.

The last point I want to make is that when land use is included, one discovers that land use is generating far more emissions than we thought. It has added another 3.3 million tonnes that have to be found under the climate plan. I do not see where that has been allocated or where it will be met. That needs to be clarified otherwise we will be revisiting the targets set for the different sectors, which will not be easy.

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