Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I join in welcoming the Waterford Crystal workers to the Gallery and the Taoiseach's commitment to meet them.

This week saw more grim news on climate, with the latest projections from the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, showing starkly that we are not going to meet our emissions reductions targets, have no chance of achieving a 51% reduction in emissions by 2030, even though this is our legally binding target, and that in a best-case scenario greenhouse gases will only be reduced by 29% by 2030. Friends of the Earth called this alarming and disappointing, yet today there are reports that a memo was presented to Cabinet by the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, setting out a list of additional measures that he says could close the gap and that were not modelled by the EPA, measures that will, apparently, be contained in a revised national energy and climate plan to be published this week. The list of measures sounds somewhat like magical thinking to me, but I would like to know whether the plan will be published this week and whether we will have time to debate it in the Dáil. I understand it is to be submitted to the EU Commission next month. How does the Government propose to take the urgent action that is necessary to ensure we meet our essential and legally binding emissions reductions targets to avoid what we know is a climate catastrophe?

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