Climate target failure again
Deputy O'Gorman returned to the EPA’s warning that Ireland will miss its 2030 targets and face major fines. The Taoiseach replied that the last 16 months alone cannot explain the shortfall and that progress has still been made under successive governments.
This morning, the EPA stated that Ireland was going to dramatically fail to meet its 2030 legally binding climate targets. This failure by the Government will have major financial consequences for Ireland, with fines running into billions of euro to be imposed by the European Union. Listening to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, on the radio and listening to the Taoiseach in response to Deputy Bacik, you would swear this morning's announcement was actually good news - the Government patting itself on the back because it is only going to fail the first carbon budget by a small amount; delighted with itself that the link between emissions and growth is broken, even though plenty of European countries did that ages ago; listing past growth in renewable energy, even though that was led by Green Party policies; and entirely ignoring the fact that its climate action plan is five months behind schedule. I have a serious question: does this morning's announcement that we are so far off target cause the Taoiseach any concern whatsoever?
Comment on this
The Deputy should not be condemning himself so much. It is only 16 months that this Government has been in place. The idea that we are not getting to 50% because of the past 16 months is nonsense. The Deputy must know that. Policies take a lot of time to bed in and deliver. The last Government did a lot, including Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens. The Green Party does not have a monopoly on climate. What is the Deputy saying? Is it that what happened when he was in government was not sufficient? He cannot blame the last 16 months for where we are. We have made progress. The targets are significantly challenging. The Deputy knows that - he always knew it. His former leader always knew it as well, so let us have a bit of realism here. The Deputy cannot just say that because his party lost the election, suddenly everything has gone south in terms of environmental and climate policy. It has not. One of the challenges is you need to work with people, not browbeat them, lecture them and hector them into climate change. That is one of the challenges. It is a concerning issue but we have made progress. Our population has grown dramatically. The Deputy should acknowledge that, too.