I join in welcoming the Waterford Crystal workers to the Gallery and the Taoiseach's commitment to meet them.

This week saw more grim news on climate, with the latest projections from the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, showing starkly that we are not going to meet our emissions reductions targets, have no chance of achieving a 51% reduction in emissions by 2030, even though this is our legally binding target, and that in a best-case scenario greenhouse gases will only be reduced by 29% by 2030. Friends of the Earth called this alarming and disappointing, yet today there are reports that a memo was presented to Cabinet by the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, setting out a list of additional measures that he says could close the gap and that were not modelled by the EPA, measures that will, apparently, be contained in a revised national energy and climate plan to be published this week. The list of measures sounds somewhat like magical thinking to me, but I would like to know whether the plan will be published this week and whether we will have time to debate it in the Dáil. I understand it is to be submitted to the EU Commission next month. How does the Government propose to take the urgent action that is necessary to ensure we meet our essential and legally binding emissions reductions targets to avoid what we know is a climate catastrophe?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. To the very best of my knowledge, the plan is to publish that plan this week. Let me confirm that. It would be timely, subject to the agreement of the House, to have a debate on climate, the EPA report and the new national plan the Minister will publish and submit to Europe to fulfil our requirements. The EPA will acknowledge that it has not yet been in a position to model actions that are about to start. For example, yesterday we agreed a new national biomethane plan. There are changes proposed around Dublin city relating to traffic. The impact of such changes is obviously not yet represented in the 29% figure. There are also plans to bring forward a new national adaptation plan. I will talk to the Minister for the environment and seek clarity on when the report will be published. The Government will be happy to have a debate on this.