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

I am unable to accept amendments Nos. 18, 70 and 71. The Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action did an incredibly good job. As Senator Pauline O'Reilly stated, there has not been a previous example of such detailed recommendations coming from pre-legislative scrutiny. Equally, I do not believe there has been such an example of where so many of the recommendations were accepted and nor will there be for a long time. Significant swathes of proposals were accepted, which very much informs and changes this Bill. We made further amendments on Committee Stage in the Dáil to respond to concerns that certain academics had concerning the risk that the way the 2030 target was framed might see attempts to deliver it all in the past year, which was never really feasible. To avert this risk, we amended the Bill further.

Section 6A(5) sets out what the Climate Change Advisory Council must do in the context of its first two budgets. There is an urgency in getting the Bill through the Houses before the summer recess in order that we can include this year in our calculations and, hopefully, go to Glasgow with some of the work done in terms of setting these budgets or agreeing the approach. It is appropriate to do it in that way on the basis of a 51% reduction in 2030 based on the emissions for 2018. There was no expectation in any public utterances from me or anyone else in our party or in the programme for Government negotiations that it would be an exact reduction of 7% per annum. The figure of 7% was used to give an estimate of what the science is indicating.The 7% figure is an estimate in line with what the science says, which is that we have to halve emissions in this decade. That is no small challenge. It is incredibly ambitious. No other country has ever halved emissions in a decade and we are starting from a baseline where we had not reduced emissions so we have almost all of the journey still to go. People might think that other countries in Europe with an average emissions reduction target of 55% are more ambitious but most other countries have already achieved emissions reductions of up to 30% and have a much smaller gap to cover to reach that target. The output sharing arrangement system in Europe will be teased out. We have set a radically ambitious goal, which international comparison will show is of the scale of change that we need to make.

It will not be done on a year-to-year basis. The Climate Change Advisory Council is the best body to decide on the five-year chunks. I expect that its analysis will show that a lot of the gap that we need to close will be in the latter part of this decade. It takes time to implement land use change measures. We do not have workers at the moment to conduct retrofitting. We need to scale up apprenticeships. It takes time to build the public transport and other projects that we need. This cannot be managed by fiat. One cannot say to the economy that it will be a 7% reduction this year and have everyone turn up the following year with a 7% reduction. It will take detailed policy implementation. The Climate Change Advisory Council can estimate what the timelines are. This was given as a political commitment, not just for the programme for Government but because that is what the science says we should do. We are following the science. I appreciate all the work that was done in that committee. We have accepted the vast majority of recommendations but I will not be able to accept this amendment. I believe that the current wording in the Bill is sufficient and more appropriate.