Results 301-320 of 2,990 for speaker:Ossian Smyth

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I thank Deputy Naughten for his amendment. I will first address the definition question and how we will define the impact of biogenic methane in particular. Previously, the Deputy referred to carbon leakage and, as I said, addressing such an issue requires international co-operation. International co-operation is needed on definitions, metrics and measurements even before starting to...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: They are good questions. This pattern is always a challenge: wanting to do something in one's own country while the EU is doing something on a general level. How does one reconcile the two? One option is to sit back and wait for the EU to do something and then try to row in with it. We are quite far behind. A previous Taoiseach described us as a climate laggard. We do not have the...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I am not sure what I can say without repetition. Our Bill is about net emissions so credit will be given for sequestering carbon. The legislation we make will have to, at some point, align with European legislation and achieve the same goals and we will be working to do that. We will not wait for Europe to legislate first. We will move ahead as quickly as we can, even if it takes all...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I think Deputy Healy-Rae's point was that farmers who do things that protect the environment and that save carbon and who are involved in forestry, protecting hedgerows, need to get credit for that. He is absolutely right. This whole thing has to be about protecting farmers' incomes in order that we can bring farmers with us and that they have a role in this. I was really heartened by the...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I wanted to move to Deputy O'Rourke. He asked about the different calculation formulas. I think he was asking whether we are moving from 2018 to 2030 as the start year. That is correct. It is a 51% reduction. I think the Deputy was asking whether or not that aligns with the 7% reduction every year. What the programme for Government says is an average of 7%. What has to be taken into...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: The CCAC is responsible for setting targets for each greenhouse gas separately. Its obligation and duty is to take into account the best scientific advice it can find on this. As I said, it does this in such a way that, in co-operation and collaboration with other countries, when we make transboundary agreements to do with things like carbon leakage they are actually workable; we have the...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: This is about emissions, sequestration and the change from one year to the next. It is not about the emissions that were emitted in the past. I am not sure whether anybody was really suggesting it is. It is, of course, about the actions one carries out in each year. If one plants new trees in a hedgerow, that saves CO2, whereas if one burns a lot of fuel, one has emitted a lot of CO2...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I accept that these amendments are made in good faith but I am going to argue against them. At the moment the Oireachtas is getting its chance to decide if it wants to carry out these ambitious emissions reductions over the coming decade. It is setting in place a process by which we can achieve that. There are checks and balances along the way as we decide how it is done. We have our...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I thank the Deputies for their contributions. As legislators, we decide the line that is drawn between what is an Executive action and what is an action for the Oireachtas and this is part of what is happening in respect of drawing up this Bill. What this Bill does is set a very clear target. As Deputy Naughten said, the 2015 Act was inadequate. This is trying to address that. I welcome...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I am sorry. I am here, I just do not have my video on. I apologise.

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: My sincere apologies. I heard the comments just made by Deputy Naughten, if he wishes to continue from there.

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: Deputy Naughten made a comparison between NPHET and the CCAC, which is something useful and interesting to think about. In the same way NPHET is not sovereign, neither does the CCAC have a divine authority. The Government will have the final say. It is an advisory group that gives its advice, using the best economic and scientific knowledge it has, to the Government and the Government then...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I thank the Deputy. I appreciate and acknowledge his experience as a Minister and also his interest in this sector. I remember his efforts to tackle issues like air pollution and so on in the past. The sectoral targets will be decided by the Government, but that will not happen in a vacuum. It will have to comply with section 4 of the legislation, which sets out a long list of criteria...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I am listening to the Deputy and will consider those mechanisms between now and Report Stage. I am thinking carefully about everything he has said. The sectoral division is not going to be on the basis of cost alone. That is what section 4 is about. There are many factors aside from cost in politics, as the Deputy knows. We must accord with people's values and there are other things that...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I will let Deputy Naughten have the last word.

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: Deputy Whitmore's amendment asks for "a sub-sectoral emissions ceiling". However, it subsequently appears to be a cross-sectoral measure so it is not sub-sectoral. It applies to everything because everything that has electricity would be affected. The amendment also says that if a sector switches towards electricity to save on emissions, that should not count towards its emissions savings....

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I will speak first to amendments No. 169 and 170. They been not been ruled out of order, have they?

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: The key section in the Bill is section 6D. It provides for the alteration of carbon budgets. One of those ways is carryover. Obviously we are going to have a situation where either we exactly meet the carbon budget or our outturn is that we have over or underachieved, and the mechanism is there that the Minister must seek the advice of the Climate Change Advisory Council before making a...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021: Committee Stage (Resumed) (9 Jun 2021)

Ossian Smyth: I apologise to the Deputy, is his point again about the role of Government versus the role of the Houses of the Oireachtas in sectoral emissions targets or in revising targets? Is that his basic point?