John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his attendance and for taking two debates one after the other. I pay tribute to Deputy Leddin. As Chairman of the Oireachtas committee for the past 18 months, he has done a tremendous job of steering landmark legislation through the Oireachtas. Senators Higgins and Pauline O'Reilly and other committee members will agree that at all times Deputy Leddin has tried to do so in a very collegial and consensus-based manner. We do not agree all of the time. That is the way politics and the world of debate are and that is absolutely fine. I pay tribute to Deputy Leddin and his stellar leadership of the committee in getting us to where we are today.

In my simplistic view, carbon budgets set out a clearly defined roadmap we need to follow to achieve the targets we want to hit in 2030 and 2050. As the Minister stated, that roadmap includes the sectoral targets. I refer to how expansive those sectoral targets are, whether in agriculture, changing land use, active travel, transport or what we want to do with electric vehicles or getting people back on public transport. The targets are so vast and widespread that it is so important we have carbon budgets to provide that significant roadmap for people in a wide variety of sectors to be able to follow. I have no doubt that the introduction of carbon budgets will help us to get to a climate-resilient and, most important, a climate-neutral economy by 2050.

The public consultation was really important and there are many good views for the Minister and his officials to consider. What is impressive about the climate action committee is that it is able to draw on such a wide variety of people from academia, NGOs and a whole sector of society to get expert advice that we, as Oireachtas Members, can take back and put into a report and recommendations for the Minister to consider.

To add to the point made by Senator Pauline O'Reilly, while we have to be ambitious about this because that is what the climate crisis demands, it is also about doing it in a structured way so that we can bring people along with us. We have to accept that it is going to be more difficult to bring some people along with us than others. It is about convincing those people and being able to bring them on board in a simple manner that will help all of us get to the points we want to achieve. That is why it is important to be ambitious, but also to realise that we need to bring people along with us on this whole journey. There are many people in society who have been major advocates on climate justice and climate action politics for many years but the vast majority of the public have only got on board with it in the past four, five or six years. It is the average person on the street who we need to really convince about why we have to do this. That is exactly the type of person we need to bring along. We need to be ambitious but it is also very important to be cognisant of that fact.

I pay tribute to colleagues on the committee, particularly Senator Higgins, who is an excellent voice and brings a lot of experience, and Senator Pauline O'Reilly. I commend Deputy Leddin on doing an excellent job of steering such landmark legislation through the Oireachtas in the past 18 months. I cannot speak for everyone, but I think the committee would be lost without him.