Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senators for their contributions. These amendments are grouped because they all seek to add to the list of concepts to which the Minister and the Government must have regard when they are making national, long-term climate action strategy, sector emissions ceilings, preparing climate plans and so on. There are 18 concepts listed. That list was the result of recommendations from the pre-legislative scrutiny report and a hierarchy was formed with the other concepts listed in section 4(8). These four amendments seek to add more items to that list.

The first amendment proposes to include the SDGs. I will not speak at length on this issue because I covered it in a previous contribution. The issue will be brought up again on Report Stage. In short, although the SDGs are not binding, the Paris Agreement is binding and it is referenced in the Bill.

As Senator Boyhan said, I have taken an interest in the Aarhus Convention and have used it successfully in the past. It can do things that are not possible under, for example, freedom of information legislation. It is not just about obtaining information, it is also about including people in public consultation and in public decision-making. This Bill goes further than just relying on the Aarhus Convention for that public consultation because it provides a statutory basis for various forms of public consultation so that people have more of a sense that they have contributed and that the formation of carbon plans and strategies is done in a more democratic fashion. Ireland is a full signatory to the Aarhus Convention. I take Senator Higgins's points that there will be a report later this year about its implementation. That report may show some deficiencies, although I do not know what they are going to be. I do not think this Bill is the place to correct those deficiencies. The Aarhus Convention is in operation in Ireland and I have used it in the past. I am not sure how including reference to the convention in this section and adding it as a 19th concept for the Minister and the Government to have regard to will help.

Amendment No. 59 is interesting because the idea is to look at the consumption of emissions rather than just their production. One can imagine a country that produces no emissions at all but imports them from a country on the other side of the world which is burning things. It is a form of outsourcing emissions and that is the area at which this amendment looks. When one is trying to control emissions or attempts are being made internationally to control them, going back to the Kyoto Agreement, the first thing to do is to say that if one wants to manage emissions, they must first be measured through a common method and agreed metrics on what emissions are. To do that, everybody sits down and asks how they should be measured. Nobody wants to double count emissions, so the question arises as to whether emissions should be measured in the place where the emissions are consumed or produced. A decision was made to measure emissions on the basis of production rather than consumption. That metric was used not just in the Kyoto Protocol but also in the Paris Agreement. Under the production-based approach, emissions are attributed to the country in which they are produced rather than consumed. That must be examined at some point. There are different ways to consider the issue. Would it be better to measure emissions by consumption rather than production? If you do both, you end up double counting.

I have done a great deal of project management over the years. One of the best ways to kill a project is to keep adding things to do it, pushing its scope and thinking of more things to include until the project is no longer viable and never happens. I would put this amendment into that frame. If we are going to measure production and consumption, we are probably going to do nothing.

The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, has produced research on consumption-based emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, funded that. The results of the research will be coming out and I am looking forward to them. The project will estimate consumption-based emissions for Ireland, focusing on where the emissions are being emitted across the globe and in which products they are concentrated. An additional project will use those estimates to examine the impacts of reducing emissions through reduced consumption of high-emission goods by applying a green VAT.The outcome of the research and the recommendations based on it are expected later this year and will be examined by the Department, when available, separately. We come back to concepts like carbon leakage or a carbon border tax. Those are issues that will have to be looked at in the future.

Amendment No. 60, on which Senator Ruane spoke, proposes that "the amount of emissions produced by registered companies within the State and accountability mechanisms in respect of such emissions" should be taken into account. My fundamental problem with this is that it imposes a requirement on the Government or the Minister to take into account the emissions of these companies, rather than imposing a requirement on the companies to report their emissions, which would be a better way of managing the matter. Most emissions are from the private sector and the whole purpose of the Bill is to cut emissions wherever they are from, be it the public sector or the private sector, over a decade. We have to cut private sector emissions. All of these companies have to cut their emissions or we will not reach our goal. They have to be a part of it but this is not the way to do it. What is required is that emissions, whether they are produced privately or publicly, are cut, and that they are done through the climate action plan, regulation, taxation and public policy. That is the way they will be cut.

Those are my answers in respect of the four amendments, none of which I am proposing to accept.