Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)

Not only is the Government failing in this regard, it is also regrettably going backwards. Only last year, it was predicted that the State could reach 29% emission reductions. This year, it was reduced to 23% by the EPA. Our target for 2030 is that 80% of our energy will be renewable. The EPA is telling us that now only approximately 68% will be able to be renewable by 2030. When it comes to transport, the Minister referenced the number of EVs on the roads. The EPA is not even bothering with the previous goal of almost 1 million cars on the road; it is now talking about approximately 650,000 EVs on the road by 2030 at best. It feels that the Minister is pursuing policies that are pushing us further and further away from reaching our climate goals through the Government's pursuit of road over rail and obsession with energy hungry data centres. There is change in policy on fracked gas and the green light was given for liquefied natural gas, LNG, terminals and increased fire powered generation. I call on the Minister again to change course.

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