Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This House sends Members to a number of Oireachtas joint committees. I am a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment, as is Senator Leyden. That committee met on 25 October when we considered the then projections for greenhouse gas emissions and the extent to which the State was challenged or not challenged by meeting its national targets in this respect.

On that day the committee heard submissions from officials from the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment and from staff of the Environmental Protection Agency. Various projections and graphs were provided to the committee suggesting that, while things were not satisfactory and not totally on target, they were within manageable margins of achieving our requirements.

On 10 November the EPA then went public with totally different figures indicating that we were badly off target in respect of all of these matters. I want the Leader to use his offices to invite the Minister, Deputy Naughten, to come to the House to deal with these matters.

Based on the documentation furnished to the committee, the EPA and the Department were well aware that the figures the committee had received and were discussing were seriously dubious at the time the committee meeting took place. They must have been aware from drafts in their possession and from the research done for the publication on 10 November that Ireland was very badly missing its targets. The committee was given the impression that was not the case. I was there and I remember the general feeling among members of the committee was that this was a manageable situation, nothing was out of control and there was no need to panic. However, it has now emerged that the EPA and the Department, assuming that they communicate with each other and that they do their jobs well at all, must have been aware from preliminary figures that the material furnished to the committee was seriously misleading.

I ask the Leader to ask the Minister, Deputy Naughton, to come to the House to explain exactly what in the report which was prepared and issued in early November was unknown to the officials and to the EPA members who attended the committee meeting, and to explain to us why, given that we had set aside a meeting to consider these important issues, we were left in the dark and seriously misled as to the gravity of the situation and the implications for agriculture, industry, energy production, transport and economic growth in this country on which we were lulled into a false sense of security. I ask the Leader to ensure that the Minister comes to the House to explain this. There is no point in having joint committees if they are to be given the mushroom treatment, if I may use that phrase.