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

There are two grounds for revising the target. One is where there is new scientific advice demonstrating more is needed and the other is where a new international agreement is entered into with a higher level of ambition. It is not foreseen that the climate change advisory council would take a policy role where it would set a higher level of ambition than is set by the 51% figure.

The 51% figure is incredibly ambitious and it will be extremely hard to meet it. We saw reductions in emissions, even during a year of lockdown, did not meet our expectations. That was even when nobody was driving anywhere, commuting to work or flying. We did not have the reduction in emissions we hoped for. Lockdown is hard but we are now looking at ten years of consistently huge reductions in emissions in Ireland for us to make up for the fact we did not do anything in previous decades. It will be so much harder to reach that target.

Sometimes people might look at the figure and see it as similar to the European target but it will be incredibly difficult to get there. If we can cut our emissions in half in a decade, it would be an incredible achievement. There are two mechanisms for increasing the target but I am not proposing to empower the Climate Change Advisory Council to order society to go beyond what is already a very challenging and ambitious target.