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

I note the ESRI’s assessment of the embodied emissions in Irish imports and welcome the insight it provides. While Ireland’s climate policy primarily focuses on reducing production-based emissions in line with national greenhouse gas inventories, it also considers the wider impacts of climate policy, including on consumption-based emissions. The 2023 climate action plan includes policies in cross-cutting and circular economy chapters, which will shape public procurement and the use of resources in our economy. Other policies which aim to target production-based emissions can also indirectly affect our carbon footprint, including for example, policies designed to stimulate demand for alternative construction materials with lower levels of embodied carbon.

A well-established circular economy provides more access to better-designed products, which can be shared, reused, repaired and remade, thereby minimising the use of resources. This provides opportunities for local jobs. It improves our economy, our environment and our health. The Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022 is a key step in Ireland’s transition to a circular economy. It provides a robust statutory framework for moving from a focus on managing waste to a focus on adapting patterns of production and consumption.

On 18 April 2023, the European Parliament adopted the carbon border adjustment mechanism, CBAM, which will apply carbon pricing to imports of certain goods into the EU to mirror the our emissions trading scheme, ETS, system. In addition to reducing carbon leakage and enabling a reduction in the free allocation of the ETS, the policy will incentivise emissions reductions in third countries. This will support Irish and EU industries facing carbon pricing and ensure that emissions are not simply reallocated to third countries. The ESRI's research is very important and backs up the points made by Deputy Bruton.

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