Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action debate -
Thursday, 16 Feb 2023

Climate Action Plan 2023: Discussion

Chairman

I have received apologies from Deputy Whitmore. The purpose of today's meeting is to review the Climate Action Plan 2023, which was published just before Christmas. This is the first of our meetings with relevant Ministers. It is also the committee's first meeting in the context of its mandate under the climate Act.

Accountability for progress on the climate action plan effectively lies with this committee. We have the authority to bring in the relevant Ministers and ask them about progress under the climate action plan. This will be an iterative process that I expect will happen on an annual basis and we will have all the relevant Ministers each year. On behalf of the committee, I welcome the first of these Ministers, namely, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and his officials.

As usual, I will read out the note on privilege, which is to remind the witnesses of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. If a witness's statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, I will direct the witness to discontinue and it is imperative that any such direction is complied with.

Members of the committee are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I remind members that they are only allowed to participate in the meeting if they are physically located in the Leinster House complex. I ask that prior to making their contributions to the meeting, if members are joining us online, that they would confirm that they are indeed on the grounds of Leinster House.

I call the Minister to make his opening statement.

Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications (Deputy Eamon Ryan)

I thank the Chair and committee members for inviting me to speak today about the Climate Action Plan 2023. The plan was approved by Government in December last year and provides an update on Ireland’s climate action, as well as reporting on the progress made with regard to meeting our national emission targets of a 51% reduction in emissions by 2030 relative to 2018 levels and achieving climate neutrality by no later than 2050. As the first statutory plan following the enactment of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021, the Climate Action Plan 2023 implements the legal requirement to incorporate the emission reduction pathways set by the carbon budgets and sectoral emissions ceilings, with further work to be completed concerning land use, land use change and forestry, LULUCF, emissions and unallocated emissions savings in the second carbon budget period ahead of the Climate Action Plan 2024. For each sector that has an emissions ceiling, the Climate Action Plan 2023 includes a roadmap of actions to ensure compliance in the remainder of the first carbon budget period. The Climate Action Plan 2023 also includes potential actions and measures for the second carbon budget period and an overview of potential policies for the third period. The Climate Action Plan 2023 will be accompanied by an annexe of actions which will provide additional detail for the actions identified in the plan, which we expect to be published next week. This will include steps to support delivery, expected outputs, lead Departments, timelines for delivery and other stakeholders. This additional information supports the implementation and delivery of plans and policies to meet our climate goals while also supporting the monitoring and reporting process that is essential to ensuring the successful delivery of our climate ambition.

As part of the preparatory work for delivering the Climate Action Plan 2023, extensive consultation was carried out by my Department with stakeholders including all relevant Departments and agencies. The principal means of engagement was through the establishment of ten working groups in September 2022. In addition to the working groups, there was significant bilateral engagement at both official and ministerial level to discuss the challenges, opportunities and potential solutions to the issues this process raised. The Climate Action Plan 2023 includes actions that will transform and improve life in Ireland. These actions will support warmer and better-built homes, more sustainable transport systems, increased levels of indigenous renewable energy, more efficient and sustainable business practices and new income streams for farmers. Key targets in the plan include enough renewable electricity to power every home and business in the country by 2030, 70% of people in rural Ireland to have buses that go three times a day to the nearest town, 500,000 homes retrofitted to building energy rating, BER, B2 to make them warmer, one in three private cars on our roads to be electric by 2030, walking, cycling and public transport to account for 50% of all daily trips and tillage farming to cover up to 400,000 ha by 2030. The societal and economic changes required to meet these targets will require a collaborative effort by Government, businesses, academia, communities and individuals to implement new and ambitious policies to deliver the technological innovations, systems and infrastructures we need. I have every faith that we will together reduce our overall economy-wide carbon emissions year by year. This is not just the right thing to do for our environment and the planet but also the smart thing to do for our economy.

I believe that this year will be a significant one for Ireland’s transition towards net zero. We have laid the foundations with the 2021 climate Act and our 2022 carbon budgets and sectoral ceilings. Our latest plan is ambitious and impactful but also achievable. The transition to a carbon-neutral economy will provide huge opportunities to foster innovation, create new jobs and grow businesses in areas like offshore wind, cutting-edge sustainable agriculture and low-carbon construction. While we all must act together towards our climate objective, I realise that the costs of climate action will be felt more acutely by some than others. As a Government, we are committed to protecting those most vulnerable and to ensuring a just transition to a low-carbon economy. I thank the committee and acknowledge the integral role its members are playing in reviewing and contributing to the Government’s progress towards achieving our climate ambitions. This oversight from this committee is a key component of our enhanced climate governance structures and will improve the accountability of Ministers for delivery of climate action in each area. I look forward to further engagement with the committee as we work towards achieving a 51% reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net zero by no later than 2050.

Chairman

Will the Minister speak about the mechanisms being put in place to ensure across all sectors that we are going to stay on track or if we go off track, we will get back on? Is there anything built into the climate action plan to ensure that? It is an immense challenge across every sector. Certain sectors get a lot of the limelight but every sector has a huge challenge, be it energy, transport, housing, built environment, agriculture or others. How does the Department ensure everybody is pulling together and meeting that immense challenge?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

It is going to be an immense challenge. The scale and speed of change are beyond compare. The climate law, this committee, local authorities and the Government Departments all have a role. The law sets out some of those accountability mechanisms. As the committee is aware, there will also be a whole tranche of European law with 20 pieces of legislation on the Fit for 55 package that will back that up and will require greater ambition to deliver what we need to do. The first accountability mechanism is the measurement of progress or otherwise. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, is due to publish in April, I think, the results for last year, including sectorial emission ceilings. My understanding from talking to officials earlier is that it is are also looking to evolve towards a more European accounting mechanism in which there will be quarterly reports in line with what the European Union does. That will be useful so there are more specific mechanisms. The other accounting mechanism, the annexe of actions, is important. Deputy Bruton was, in my mind, responsible for devising that approach, similar to what was done in previous iterations in the Government to deliver economic objectives and so on. It has taken slightly longer than I would have liked to get that annexe of actions published but it will be published next week, as I said, subject to being agreed by Government next week. That is an important measure. There is significant change now that we are under the full ambit of the law. There is a tightening of that annexe of actions, a reduction from an annexe of actions of about 1,000, which is probably too many, down to some 400 actions, as I understand. The much more precise definition within the annexe of actions of what needs to be achieved and when is a further critical accounting mechanism.

Within the law, this committee has a key role because Ministers have to report annually. It is important that it is each Minister, not just the Minister with responsibility for the environment. That is a further iteration and a real responsibility of this committee to hold those Ministers to account.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

I thank the Minister for being here. To pick up on that point, this is a process that is evolving. We need to get to a place where we have a calendar of engagements and accountability. Maybe we need to look at the scheduling of that in relation to EPA announcements or updated figures. We want to get to a place where we are actually looking at the detail of it. The idea as I understand it is that Ministers would come in and account for the performance of their Department and how they are going to improve on it or otherwise.

Regarding the governance structures, following up on the Chair's point, I see some evolution in the climate action plan. There is a reformed climate action delivery board and a climate action unit in the Department of the Taoiseach. I know I am in the Opposition but you certainly get the sense from engagements that the new dispensation has not penetrated across the Government or into all individual Departments. As a committee, there is some frustration in getting access to officials. Sometimes I feel there is not a deep understanding of the implications of the climate action plan or the climate action law. Can the Minister give us a sense of how he feels the climate action plan is being adopted across all of Government? What are the tools for accountability within the Government, within the Department of the Taoiseach and within individual Departments? I appreciate that there are limitations in terms of Cabinet confidentiality and all of that but I think the Minister gets the point I am trying to make. This is not a hobbyhorse of any individual Minister; this is something that needs to penetrate across all of Government and needs to reflect a new way of doing business. I often draw the comparison around how equipped we are to deal with financial matters and how ill-equipped we are to deal with climate matters. I ask the Minister to comment on some of that.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I should have said in response to the Chair that part of the architecture and infrastructure of governance and accountability is the Climate Change Advisory Council. It has a critical role. It is independent. Its members are appointed initially by the Government but I do not think anyone would doubt its independence. It has a critical role and it will be reporting and reviewing the Government's actions and holding us to account.

I was surprised that Deputy O'Rourke said he has had difficulty getting access to officials. If there is a difficulty there, that is something we should address because this committee has always had a very significant role on the climate side. If there is any hesitancy from any Department to report to or answer questions before this committee, that would be a very serious issue and something that would need to be addressed very quickly.

Regarding the governance structures, we have the likes of the climate action delivery board, which is the central structure within the Department of the Taoiseach and involves the Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach and the Secretary General of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. There is a lot of architecture with each Department having its own delivery board to look at where it has particular responsibility as to how the plan being delivered. Quarterly reports are required in that regard. I will be honest; we are still only picking up pace. The scale of change ahead of us is beyond compare and that will require all of Government and local government. I have been engaged in the last number of months in going around and talking to local authorities because they have a critical role within the law. I will be with Offaly County Council tomorrow. While everyone is on board with the logic of us making this change, it is going to take time for us to ramp up across the system, in all our systems, with regard to the actual reality of that change.

I have to be upfront and honest and look at our public, political and media debate in some areas. There are contentious areas like transport and agriculture, as well as housing and energy. A lot of the time it is presented as "Shock horror: Change is coming in this area". There is change coming. Having said that, a highly significant survey was done by the EPA involving up to 3,000 or 4,000 people being interviewed in a detailed very scientific basis. It showed that the vast majority of Irish people - over 80% - including rural and urban, young and old, want to take action to address climate change. The political hesitancy or controversy around this will change, as will the system slowness, which is in every part of our system, in local government and central government. That will have to change and will change because ultimately it is a move towards a better way of doing things. It is not punitive. It is where the world is going, where technology is going and where the new economy is going. We can overcome that inertia and we will. We will have to.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

I might just clarify the point around access to officials. The greater concern for me, thinking back to a lot of our deliberations in this committee, is access to officials who have a deep understanding of the implications for them and their Department of the climate Act and the climate action plan. Maybe it is just a matter of that system slowness. That is to some degree understandable but at the same time we are in a rush and anything that can be done to ensure Departments at every level are aware of their role and responsibility will be essential to delivering on all of this.

Chairman

To add to Deputy O'Rourke's point, we had a session earlier in the week with housing officials, who were excellent. I want to give them credit for coming in and speaking with us but there was a sense, members found, that they were passing ownership of the very specific critical path of reducing emissions back to the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. I think it is fair to say we as a committee felt that they needed to have ownership of their path. While excellent policy was certainly being communicated to us, and probably more the medium to longer-term stuff, there was not a sense that they were looking at the numbers as closely as they needed to in order to own the challenge that is there in the built environment sector. Would Deputy O'Rourke say that is fair?

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

Yes.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

In the allocation of the sectoral emissions ceilings, there are certain sectors where it is very clear where the responsibility lies. Transport, for example, lies with the Minister. Even though it connects through to energy and other areas, and housing and transport are inextricably connected, in truth the Department of Transport has the real responsibility there. It is the same with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with agricultural emissions and it is the same in our Department with regard to energy emissions.

The areas where there is overlap include public sector emissions and housing. The latter is where we will probably have to focus most in making sure it does not fall through the cracks. With regard to the public sector, the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform has a key role but that is not the sole role. It is up to each line Minister, particularly in health, education and justice, which account for some of the big public sector emissions. That is a more difficult area on which we have to focus. It is understandable that the first interest of the Minister for Health is to get patients well, while that of the Minister for Education is to get pupils taught. There is real benefit in making sure schools are well built and warm and hospitals are efficient but, although the Ministers are aware they also have a responsibility in the context of emissions, it is difficult to put that at the centre of the management board of those Departments. That is what we must do, however. Similarly, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has a key role in building performance standards, for example, such as in terms of embodied carbon within buildings and the type of buildings that are being built. That will always be an issue for that Department. Understandably, its primary focus, particularly in the current climate, is on building as many houses as it can. We need to be careful, however, that it does not all revert to the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communication. The main responsibility has to be shared and that is probably going to be one of the biggest challenges.

Deputy Richard Bruton

I thank the Minister for coming in and for all his work in this area. We are moving on from setting targets to delivering on them. This is a more important phase than target-setting. I ask him to provide a rough picture of compliance with the plan across the sectors in 2022. I may be wrong but it seems that certain measures we thought would be relatively easy to get mobilised seem to be slow coming, such as, in particular, the commitment by local authorities to electric vehicle, EV, charging, the funding underpinning retrofits for the long term to make them cheaper, the carbon rewards system to farmers and offshore renewables. One gets the sense that there is a loss of momentum in those areas. What does the big picture show? Is the Minister seeing significant failure by Departments, for whatever reason, genuine or otherwise? Is there a lot of slippage? When the 2022 numbers are published, they are bound to show there has been bounceback and that, post Covid, we will not have as good a year as we might have expected. The important thing is whether Departments are genuinely delivering the actions that can underpin progress in 2023 and 2024 and so on.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

That is the big question. We are starting to see the ship turning around. I am seeing progress across a variety of areas. It is not as fast as I would like but momentum is starting to build. If the Deputy does not mind me providing a lengthy answer to his question, which is broad, I will provide examples. It is in the context of an increasing challenge. One of the key issues is that all our targets are based on the Paris Agreement, climate science and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The emissions reductions that have to be achieved under that agreement are not on a per capita basis but, rather, on a state or nation basis, that is, a national declared contribution. Ireland is growing rapidly. There is no country like us at the moment in terms of the expansion in the economy. Admittedly, the GDP figures are questionable but even to bring it back down to modified domestic demand or some other mechanism, our economy boomed last year, with full employment and approximately 150,000 people coming into the country, as well as natural population growth. That is a real challenge in the context of how we achieve our targets. In addition, in the previous decade we did not achieve the reductions other countries achieved, so we have to catch up to get back on track. That presents a difficulty. That said, I will give some brief examples.

In agriculture, my expectation is that the figures to be released in April will not show a significant change from 2021 to 2022. There may well be a reduction in the context of agriculture because there was a reduction of approximately 14% in fertiliser use, which would reduce emissions. However, I am certain the dairy herd continued to expand, we have a continuing issue relating to land use issues that is not directly connected with agriculture and our forestry is starting to go from being a sink to being a source. Those are some of the underlying difficulties. A sign of progress is that the ACRES scheme under CAP was massively oversubscribed. Irish farmers are starting to see the sense in this. In the past two and a half years or three years, the volume of organic farming has increased by 300%. I am going on memory so the Deputy should not quote these figures. That is the scale of expansion, however. Hundreds of people turn up to farm visits with farmers going in this smart and lower carbon direction. There is really clever and good grass management in the context of the development of mixed sward farming systems. The constraint now is not related to farmers wanting to do it but to getting access to the seed. Many examples are pointing towards the country changing and moving in a greener direction. Complacency would not serve us well, however. There will not be a significant reduction in the overall numbers, even with the fertiliser reduction, because the national herd, particularly the dairy herd, increased.

As regards energy, the Deputy referred to offshore renewables. I attended a conference held by the Irish Wind Energy Association yesterday at which there was broad agreement that there has been incredible progress in the past year. We have had the passage of the maritime planning legislation, the establishment of the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, and the start of the first of our three auctions, to be held in 2023, 2024 and 2025. In the context of offshore development, it is a question of resourcing, and it is only starting. Deputy O'Rourke stated that we are probably too focused on the financial crisis management and not enough on this decarbonisation shift. An example of that is An Bord Pleanála being too small and needing to scale up. Interestingly, a survey presented at the conference to which I referred indicated that the biggest issue was the planning system. Undoubtedly, massive progress is occurring. My Department is at the centre of that in terms of what it is doing.

One of the progress issues is that as part of the governance structure, which I should have mentioned earlier, we are establishing six task forces to accelerate different elements of the clean and decarbonised transition to renewables and the one that has been most effective is the offshore renewables task force. We are on track, subject to us getting the planning system working effectively. Last year, there was a record volume of Irish renewables. We never installed as much renewables as we did last year. It is starting to move to solar at scale. We will see that again this year. There is real progress. The only constraints relate to the booming economy. The order books of photovoltaic, PV, companies that are installing are out the door at the moment. They are incredibly busy. The biggest constraint is getting the workers in to install the technology. It is the same in retrofitting. We met our target last year. We did 27,000 houses on the nose, which is the challenge we set ourselves, and we will do 37,000 this year. Again, there is no restriction on the public demand for it; the restriction is whether one can get enough workers. We now have 2,000 workers on apprenticeship schemes. The Minister, Deputy Harris, has done a good job in providing those workers through Skillnet. It is absolutely going gangbusters. There is significant progress to which I could point.

The downside is that we are still running Moneypoint, again, because we are a growing economy and we have very tight energy supplies. Those coal emissions are still crippling us and we have to turn Moneypoint off as quickly as we can. The direction in energy is heading in the right direction and starting to pick up speed.

The two sectors that were most problematic in 2021 were transport and agriculture where emissions rose as we came out of Covid. Transport will continue to be the biggest challenge because we have created an imbedded car-dependent system. That is not easy to shift. I will give a couple of examples of where I see the ship turning. We are ahead of our target for the number of EVs. That is actually happening. In addition, 80% of charging is done at home, which is good because then we can use power at night and, in turn, that balances our significant wind power. We have the Zero Emission Vehicles Ireland, ZEVI, scheme now and we are rolling out €100 million worth of charging supports in the next three years but it is happening.

I will give an example of progress. Recently I met a leading international expert on transport who is head of EY transport consultancy or whatever. He noted that, interestingly, Ireland is an outlier because most countries have not seen public transport numbers return to where they were pre Covid. Ireland is the exception. There are loads of examples where public transport has taken off here. Yesterday somebody told me about Cork metropolitan rail and the other day I talked to this committee about the situation in Navan where the figures are spectacular for the number of people using the local bus service. Every week we are rolling out a new Connecting Ireland rural bus transport service because there is public demand.

I am in no way complacent. We are still not going to meet the scale of reduction that we need to make, which is going to make the budget for 2025 all the more challenging. This is beyond compare challenging but I am convinced that the ship has started to turn.

Deputy Richard Bruton

On land use, the Minister has not set a definitive target and the measure of land use change seems to have dramatically increased. We are heading on an unchanged policy to, I think, 11 million tonnes of emissions from land use. Will there be a washback on to the other sectors if it proves that we cannot deliver? The EU has talked of us having a target of 3.7 million tonnes for 2030, which when compared with 11 million tonnes will be a truly massive adjustment. If we cannot meet the target will, it mean a washback into the other sectors with the targets that we have now banked on having to be revised?

I will not repeat what was said about our discussion yesterday with representatives of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Are there plans to set targets for embodied carbon at any point? I acknowledge that it is not a requirement of the Paris Agreement.

It seems that public sector leadership is particularly important and I know that the Minister has said this is a difficult area. Is there a basline for where we are at today compared with where we would hope to be with public procurement? The EPA has some sort of a measure. Is there an agreed measure of where we are at, where we want to get to and what tools need to be changed to make public procurement take account of lifetime impact and all of those things that we know about?

I strongly believe that the circular economy approach has much more potential to build momentum for change in different sectors throughout the supply chain than relying solely on climate targets. The landmark Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022 provides for strategies in each of the key sectors. Is there buy-in by different Departments to create circular economy strategies in food, construction, retail, white goods and so on? Real momentum could be built that would have a more collaborative approach than what tends to be finger pointing, in some of the climate debates, at data centres or farmers and pretending that it is not our choices that to some degree create these problem sectors. The circular economy looks at our choices as well as those of producers and right through to how we dispose of material.

Under the climate measure, the impact of waste is tiny and I think its impact is 1 million tonnes. The reality is that 90% of construction waste is not being recovered. That is a massive loss of carbon by any measure but it does not get caught in our approach. The appeal, at least for me, is that the circular economy strategy can be leaned on as a way of driving some of the changes we need to make in these sectors and will make it easier to get consensus about changes in those sectors. I will leave it at that as I know lots of other people want to comment.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

We have to be careful because one of the complexities, as the Deputy will know, is that our climate plan and targets are based on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, accounting mechanisms. That 7% target was from the time this Government came into office and measures back to 2018. There are different European timelines and targets so comparing one with the other is complicated.

The Deputy made a valid point about land use and the scale of challenge. In the middle of the process of accessing the sectoral emissions last year, scientists came back to us and said that rather than being a sink, forestry will turn into a source and land use rather than it being, as the Deputy said, approximately 4.8 million tonnes, it is going to reach the equivalent of 11 million tonnes because a lot of the forestry that was planted in the 1980s and 1990s in the uplands will be clear felled. The forestry was in the wrong location in the first place. We will have a real challenge to replace it and manage that land. The Deputy is correct that there is at least a 5 million tonne deterioration, if I recall, and recovering that is going to be a real challenge. In our climate action plan this is subject to legal challenge but in my mind it was best to say we need to assess scientifically how we can do that. We are halfway through the land use review and the evidence phase has been completed. We are due to start, which I hope will happen this month, the second phase, which will assist us in answering some of those questions on how we allocate a sectoral target to the land use sector.

To answer the Deputy's question directly, it may have kickback on some of the sectors or require the rebalancing of other sectors. It may have implications for agriculture or other such sectors. We would have to review it having done a lot of further scientific work this year to assess what soil management, forestry plans and so on will deliver the further reductions we need. This is a huge challenge and one that is most difficult but we do not have a choice under both European and Irish law.

On embodied carbon and the public procurement process, there is no baseline at present. We are asking each Department to fully engage. There is a review of green tenders and the delivery of a green public procurement strategy this year. My Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, is the key driver of this matter. That is right because he is now also the Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform so can deliver a crosscutting mechanism. One of the key aspects is embodied carbon in construction. Again, we are delivering a public procurement strategy, which I think will happen in quarter 2 of this year. There will be a review of green tenders and there will be a public procurement strategy around that so the public sector can lead on embodied carbon.

Last week, I attended a conference organised by the SEAI. It took place in The Helix theatre in Dublin City University and there must have been 700 people in the room. I have faith in our public sector.

Our public service has shown real capability during Covid-19 and Brexit and we need to deliver this level of application across all Government Departments on the public procurement side and the embodied carbon side.

Turning to the circular economy, I agree with the Deputy that this is systemic change and it must be change for the better, as well as more efficient and productive. The circular economy delivers all these potential advantages. One of the strengths we have is that the waste action plan in place, and there are about 200 actions in it, as well as the circular economy legislation and plan, has practical measures. It was devised with the involvement of all stakeholders, including industry, environmental NGOs, etc. Even in the next month or two, we are going to start to see some of the measures coming on stream. I refer to the 20-cent levy, or whatever figure is finally selected, on disposable cups to encourage us to switch in this regard. There will also be the introduction early next year of a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles. These are only examples, but they will be totemic in the switch towards a much more circular economic system. I agree with the Deputy regarding not seeing this as a punitive blame thing but as an opportunity. In terms of choice, the circular economy option is always better.

Chairman

That is a good description of its merits. I thank the Minister and Deputy Bruton. I call Deputy Bríd Smith.

Deputy Bríd Smith

I ask the Minister's pardon because my voice is a bit weak. I will use it, however, to say to the Minister that I do not believe the plan fulfils the legal requirement as he said because so many important sources are disputing this point with him. Examples include the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Professor John Sweeney, Professor Barry McMullin and An Taisce. They have all said that every measure promised is being kicked down the road and we are set to not reach our targets. We must dig down into what is going on here because the EPA last year confirmed that up to the second quarter of 2022 Ireland's emissions once again grew, making us the biggest emitter per capita in the EU. We do not have a plan that has a hope or an ambition of staying within the law. The emissions are now on track to exceed the combined ten-year target budget by 23% to 36%.

I know I bang on about this a lot, but specifically regarding the electricity sector, the Minister's claim that every home will be heated by renewable energy by 2030 is delusional. This is particularly the case given what is happening in the data centres sector. A series of gas-fired generators have just been ordered to plug a hole caused by the surge in demand from data centres and their proliferation. The Minister referred to a rapidly-growing economy. This is one area of rapid growth in our economy that we could do without. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, confirmed this week that another 16 data centres, eight of them mega data centres, are to be connected to the national grid in the next couple of years. It seems the strategy, therefore, is to kick the can down the road.

While there is a great focus on the target for 2030, there is not enough focus on the immediate targets and what we are reaching in this regard. We looked over the plan and mention of "2030" appears 279 times in the document. By comparison, "2025" appears only 184 times. This would seem to confirm that the emphasis is to meet a notional and still conveniently remote 2030 target of reducing emissions by 51% on a 2018 base year. I think this means we are failing to live within the budget. What matters most is that the wasted opportunity and the failure to live within this budget will mean the next Government will have to meet these legal obligations. This will pose great difficulties, given the restricted allocation for the second five-year period. This is a question that needs to be answered. I ask the Minister to try to address it. I also repeat the point concerning LULUCF. There is no plan for it and no ceiling has been established for the sector. How can we say this target has been reached when it has been omitted? I think it is impossible for the Minister to stand over that statement.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Correct me if I am wrong, and my officials will be able to do so, but I think it was roughly in June last year when we got a detailed sense of how far and how big the gap was on LULUCF. Last summer, then, we were faced with having to set sectoral emissions ceilings. The choice could have been to put something in which was just completely without any foundation of policy or scientific analysis, or to do what we did, which was to admit the problem and be upfront on it, be extremely clear about the scale of the gap and state that further work would need to be done because it was not possible to give an immediate and accurate assessment of the best approach to take. I stand by that decision. We will go to court and argue that we believe this was the right approach to take.

I do not for one minute doubt the ambition, motivation or correctness of the position of Professor Sweeney, Professor McMullin or others. Collectively, we have to deliver the climate targets to which we are committed. I believe, however, that it would be better done by spending this year assessing in detail what this means. I say this because we are also in a democratic, constitutional republic where we do not just operate by fiat. We must have the support of the Oireachtas. If we were to say we were just going to click our fingers and solve this problem by closing a whole swathe of industry here or shutting down a whole sector of our society there or use some other mechanism to deliver the reduction, I do not think that would be either constitutionally or democratically correct. I also do not think it would be achievable. We must live within the reality of our political world of getting support, consensus and a majority in the Oireachtas to agree to what needs to be done. Sometimes, this requires time being spent generating the analysis, sharing it, assessing it and then setting policy positions. This is what is happening as we speak.

Deputy Bríd Smith

What the Minister is saying then is that this is all great on paper, that there is a lot of good research and ambition on paper, but the reality flies in the face of it. If we cannot intervene, for example, to cut agricultural emissions or to stop the proliferation of data centres because we live in a democracy, then this objective is going to be impossible to achieve.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

It is not just on paper. There are 33,000 ha of land being rewetted as we speak, which is reducing real emissions. I do wish to increase this and we are setting 80,000 ha or so as the target. This is not on paper, it is real. The forestry programme introduced in November is also not just on paper. It is hard cash and will be revolutionary in its delivery. We are going to start to see very quickly now, to my mind, a massive expansion in the plantation of forestry here. Having a €1.3 billion budget behind this plan is not just something on paper. This is real. We can and will do this. As we do this, as well, we will show that it is not, as some might depict it, anti-rural or anti-farming. This is about ensuring we have a really secure future for the family farm and provide the funding and training required for this to be the case. This does take a certain amount of time, however. Our biggest restriction in all these areas is people. We have only two forestry courses producing graduates and we have a real shortage of people. It would be nice to click our fingers and say, "I want 5,000 foresters tomorrow", but these must come in the context of training and financial support from the Government and we will provide it.

The first tenet here is the need to get democratic consent. The second is that the State does not break contracts. I accept the Deputy's point about the data centres adding to our electricity demand and this putting real pressure on us. This State does not, however, go back on its word. If a contract has been signed and someone has an agreement with the State in respect of getting a grid connection or getting planning permission, for example, we do not just say we have changed our minds because there is another policy issue we must address. Those data centres will come online, but what we need to do is to ensure the electricity system that provides for them is able to decarbonise at the same time. Equally, these data centres too, in the context of the regulations and the way they operate, must start to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.

The Deputy mentioned the introduction of new gas-fired power generation being a problem, but we need that generation. Any analysis of how you decarbonise an Irish electricity system would recognise balancing capability. Take the week before Christmas when the wind did not blow. We cannot say to the people that we are going to decarbonise their electricity system 52 weeks of the year and leave them without heat, power or light in the week they need it most. We have to provide that for those two weeks of the year, and we are doing it.

Deputy Bríd Smith

My point was not to deny that we needed it. Not at all. I said we needed it because of the proliferation of data centres and the amount of energy they guzzle from the national grid. It is totally out of kilter with any other state. They do not allow it to go to 15% or 16% of the national grid.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

They constitute a separate issue. We need it primarily because, as I stated earlier, we must switch off Moneypoint and Tarbert. Tarbert is going to be switched off anyway because it is coming to the end of its life. In those weeks when the wind is not blowing it is not just because of the data centres; there you are into your overall demand-balancing capabilities. The gas generation that must now be developed will be hydrogen-compatible, so we can look at having dual-fuel capability. The 2 GW to 2.5 GW of additional gas we need is part of the decarbonising plan and is being delivered. People were very worried that we would not be able to get through this winter without power cuts. Some of those big power plants could go down tomorrow and we could be in real difficulty, but, touch wood, so far we have been showing a real ability to manage what is a very tight situation, and that is a real responsibility.

Deputy Bríd Smith

Will the Minister comment on the EPA's report in the context of Ireland having the largest level of emissions per capita in the EU up to the second quarter of 2022?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Yes. We cannot deny the science on this. The facts are that we have very high emissions per capita. If we look at the reasons behind that, we have a very large agricultural sector, we have a very dispersed transport system from a model of planning and housing that has embedded over the last 60 or 70 years, and we also have a very high dependence on fossil fuels. You cannot deny the science the EPA presents. What are the solutions? We switch to renewables and away from fossils, we do what the national planning frameworks says to get better balanced regional development, compact development and low-carbon development, and agriculture and land use must change. It will be change for the better because we will have to pay the young farmers and families to provide some of the nature-based solutions that are going to be part of this change.

Deputy Bríd Smith

I thank the Chair.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

I will pick up on a couple of those points. The key one we are focused on is the carbon budgets and 2025. As has been said, there have been many references to 2030 and the 51% target in that year. However, we are not simply looking at the percentage reductions but the hard tonnage with respect to the actual amount of carbon emissions tonnage the State must operate within during the two different five-year budgets. As we have begun to have our engagement with individual Ministers, I have become a little concerned we are hearing a lot about individual schemes, plans, pilots, demonstrations, and assessments but there does not seem to be an understanding in Departments that the achievement of the targets will ultimately be measured in tonnages and physical amounts of emissions. That is something that now needs to be attached to policy.

On the 295 tonnes, which is the budget up to 2025, it seems we are off target from the figures from 2021. Will the Minister address what specifically is going to be done about that target, namely, the 295 tonnes as our limit for 2025? What are the measures that could be scaled up or even the emergency measures we might need to take in order to achieve that? For example, budget 2025 is not very far away, in September of next year. It will be the budget for the final year in which we have the opportunity to meet. Is it clear emergency and key measures will be included in the normal finance budget for 2025 to ensure we achieve our carbon budget targets by the end of 2025? Again, the plan speaks about where we need to be in the year 2025 but the budget covers the full year and in some sectors we know we are looking at massive expansion.

LULUCF was mentioned. The Department is looking at that, but there are measures that could have an impact much earlier. I wonder why these are not being scaled up. Is the plan to scale them up dramatically next year in order to stay within the budget? The Minister said he did not want to put a figure but the space allocated, which is 20 megatonnes, seems very inadequate to that sector. In that context, will we look at putting a stop to felling for a period, particularly as there are multiple felling licences and that contributes and making us a net emitter? Will we look at scaling up peatland restoration in the next two years from hundreds of millions of euro's worth of funding to billions of euro's worth, which is what we are looking at spending on forestry? What emergency measures are being looked at? Will we look at moratoriums on certain forms of economic activity during that period to 2025? What does staying within the budget of 295 tonnes for 2025 look like? What does meeting those targets look like? I am quite concerned we are off beam.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

The Senator is right that there is a real challenge and no-one should underestimate the fact those emissions increased in 2021. We do not know the figures for last year yet but my expectation is they will not be significantly different. That makes it all the more challenging in the remaining years to 2025. Within the annexe functions, each Minister with responsibility will have key performance indicators they will have to meet, to answer the Senator's first question. To answer her last one, within this law if we are off track - and each Minister with responsibility will have to come to this committee more than anyone else to account for this - it is the requirement for those responsible Departments to come up with policy measures that start to put us back on track.

I will share a number of examples that can deliver some immediate reductions. Most are in my area, but not exclusively so. I am not sure if the Senator heard my answer to an earlier question, but we are in the process of setting up six task forces that pull all the elements of Government together, namely, different Departments, agencies and outside expertise, to deal with offshore wind, sustainable mobility, heating our buildings, just transition, climate communications and a land use review. What we are saying on those is absolutely fixated on asking what can be delivered by 2025? We do not think beyond 2025; it is about what can we deliver in the next three years. In that, on the transport side, it is the 35 pathfinder projects. All of them must be delivered by the end of 2025. If a council cannot deliver them by the end of 2025 we will reallocate to another council. I will give an example-----

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

I am sorry but with respect, it is fine to give a few broad examples but I have two or three other areas of questions I want to------

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Okay, then I will move on and maybe come back to it later. Another example is on the heating side. It relates to district heating in Dublin. We need to take the massive amount of waste heat coming out of the incinerator and being pumped into the River Liffey and use it to heat offices and homes in Dublin by 2025. That is a not insignificant volume of heat that could help to reduce emissions.

On solar PV, we want every school to have a solar panel on it by 2025. That would give us some of the 5,000 MW of solar power we want to produce. We will produce more solar renewables in the next three years than we produced in total over the past 20 years.

These are the sort of measures I believe we can deliver. This is tens of thousands of farms with solar PV going in as part of the solution. I see no reason why we should not be able to deliver that in the next three years. These are some of the examples of projects we need to deliver.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

The projects are really welcome but one thing we will want to see when we hear of the projects is whether the projects are being measured in terms of the tonnage and the tonnage reduction and whether that is being placed alongside it. It is not solely about what we might do that is good; it is also what we might need to reduce that is damaging. Surely if we are going to stay within our budget for 2025 some of the emergency measures that may be needed are reductions or suspensions in certain activities. The data centres issue was mentioned and the Minister referred to not breaking contracts. It seems strange, therefore, that throughout the first two years of our budget period, new contracts have been signed that commit us to data centres, many of which have gas backup generators as well.

We must also consider constraints on demolition. The Minister mentioned the economy expanding but the fact that we have a healthy economy should not be an excuse for inaction on our part or for making our climate targets difficult. In fact, many countries around the world with far less healthy economies and facing much more difficult external challenges and circumstances, are also trying to achieve their carbon targets. For Ireland that is certainly not an excuse and I am presuming that this is understood. Perhaps the Minister will explain what it looks like in terms of emergency measures.

The Minister referred to the Oireachtas. The Minister has the agreement of the Oireachtas to the carbon budgets. They are legally binding targets. We do not need to have that argument again and again. We need to know what measures will be put in place in order that we are legally compliant.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Earlier I spoke of those key performance indicators that will be set out in the annexe of actions. They are framed and shaped on what is the actual emissions abatement potential. That is to answer that first question. That is how this whole structure is done. It is about how many tonnes of carbon can be reduced.

With regard to the data centres, on entering Government we realised there was a problem here and we started the process of closing the door. We wrote to the gas company to say that we had to stop new gas connections. The plan copper-fastens that in recognising that across so many different areas, we have to stop installing any new fossil fuel infrastructure because of the target we need. When I referred to the growing economy, I do not see that as an excuse. I just mentioned it is a reality that we must recognise. It is a quantum reduction not a per capita reduction that we have to do.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

Surely that is an issue in terms of expansion. Do we need to look at constraining certain activities?

I have another query to follow up on land use. I mentioned peatlands. We are talking about hundreds of millions of euro going into peatlands but we know that they have an early and immediate reduction in the context of emissions. A damaged peatland emits whereas a restored or even a rewetted peatland will store. Forestry, which seems to be getting a lot of focus in the land use discussion, will not be reducing emissions within the 2025 budget and possibly even by the 2030 budget. We know that it takes some 15 years for newly-planted forests to become net emitters. Again, there is a concern around the huge amount of felling that is taking place? We know that Ireland is a net exporter of timber. This is not for national demand, it is largely for export, during this period when we are operating within the challenges of that first budget, which we have to hit if we are to be credible.

The Minister referred to us not breaking our contracts. Ireland has broken its contracts in its commitment under the sustainable development goals. It is estimated that we have not been fulfilling our share of the €100 billion that was promised in climate funding. Even the projected €225 million that has been spoken about is just less than half of the €545 million that would be Ireland's share. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

First we have to deliver that €225 million and we will do so.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

We are the most expanding economy in Europe. Why can we not deliver it next year?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

We will deliver it on track. If one talks to the NGOs, which the Senator does, the NGOs and others recognise that sometimes one cannot completely wrap up immediately-----

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

I know.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

-----and that it is ill spent if one does so. But we will meet that target-----

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

Sorry, is the Minister suggesting-----

Chairman

Let the Minister answer.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

We will meet that target by 2025.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

I just want to be clear about the suggestion that it would be ill spent. I do not agree with that and I would like to clarify that point.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

The Senator may not agree with it, but that is my view. Going back the Senator's first point, which is a good one, about the large-scale emissions from land use and what could we do quickly. I put it to the Senator that one of the more immediate issues is that there are still some 500,000 tonnes of peat exported annually with no planning permission, no regulation and no oversight. If we are looking at ways of storing and reducing environmental damage being done at scale, that might be one of the areas we should focus on first. With the forest programme and the felling licences, a lot of that forestry is perhaps in areas we should not have had it in the first place. We will have to manage that and this will include felling and use of the timber. The ongoing 500,000 tonnes of peat that is exported, which is completely unregulated and without any planning, is maybe where we should focus first.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

On that peatlands issue, are there plans to scale up the peatlands piece within the next period? Building on that, because the economic measures and the changing economic practice or incentives is slow, does the Minister agree that more State intervention is needed, for example more designation of State-protected areas and special areas of conservation, SACs? These are the things that we can do. With the Chairman's leave, I have one last point. On the scaling up of retrofitting, only 36,000 of the 500,000 planned retrofits are in social housing. Surely, the things that the State can do early or do on State land would give us more control in being able to exercise-----

Chairman

I thank Senator Higgins. I am mindful of time and I have given the Senator a lot of latitude.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Going around to every council in the country, the first question I ask is "How many social houses have we retrofitted this year and could we do more next year?"

I wish to make a point about land use, because it is very important. I believe the land use review s the most important of all the elements in the climate action plan. It is a highly complex optimisation. We must optimise for rural development, which is to be social progress as much as anything else, the storage of carbon, the restoration of biodiversity and the reduction of water and air pollution. That is a whole-system approach, where we look at the complex interactions in land-use, but it must have the first element in the mix, which is it has to be good for the Irish family farm, for Irish rural communities and Irish rural life. We must make sure that we pay people for those solutions in land use that we are going to need, so that we live in a beautiful island with a very stable and secure population.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

Does that require more than the 20 megatonnes of space allocated?

Chairman

I thank the Senator but we must move on to the next speaker.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

I am happy to come back in at a later point. Maybe I cannot but perhaps the Minister will address the issue of the 20 megatonnes of space allocated, and whether that is sufficient in terms of land use.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

I thank the Minister for attending today and for his opening statement. We have seen press coverage recently around Ireland's increasing emissions. None of us is happy with that and none of us can be proud of it. There is always a tendency to lay everything at the Minister's feet as if he can single-handedly stop this trend or reverse the trend. I believe that is unfair. Obviously, however, the Minister does have quite a large role to play in it.

I want to talk about where the local authorities can play a role in this. I will go through it bit by bit. Obviously, the climate action plan has just been published and announced so we cannot expect overnight implementation. The climate legislation has been in place for quite a while now, so we all are expecting to see these emissions begin to go the opposite way and we expect to see a reduction in emissions.

I also want to speak about the issue from the perspective of being a rural Deputy in west Cork, which is a pretty much predominantly a rural area. How can we implement at a faster pace some of those smaller measures that will make a big difference to rural parts of Ireland and to the emissions? One could consider it death by a thousand cuts.

Any one of these measures would have a limited impact overall on reducing emissions, but when combined and when bringing them all together, we will start to see emissions reductions.

The first issue I want to speak about relates to the plan to enhance local authorities by incentivising them to install EV charging points. I want the Minister's opinion on that and maybe an update on that. We are not seeing them in west Cork in the likes of the Beara Peninsula, the Mizen Head Peninsula or in the more western parts of my constituency. Even in Clonakilty, we do not have a fast-charging point. We have a charging point, but we do not have a fast-charging point. In Bandon, there is one in a private petrol station.

I will give the Minister a few examples of what it is like where I am from. EV technology has moved so far. The range in these cars is incredible and we can see that. We are seeing more and more EVs on the road. I can tell the Minister that in a place like west Cork, there is a reluctance to go down the EV route because of the lack of charging infrastructure. Thankfully, the benefit of a rural area is that many homeowners will have their own front gardens and driveways and therefore installing those Zappi chargers is a realistic option. However, if one is in a town or in a terraced house, that is not so much of an option. We therefore need more EV infrastructure. Is there any update on that? Can we get the message to the local authorities that they need to start installing these things at a quicker pace? There needs to be some direction.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I am very familiar with west Cork. I am also familiar with my own constituency. We will probably have a bigger challenge in Dublin Bay South than in west Cork because in truth, for the terraced houses in Donnybrook, Ringsend or Harold's Cross, there will be a much bigger challenge because there are no driveways. For the apartments and so on it is a bigger challenge, whereas in rural Ireland the majority of houses will have a connection point where it is relatively easy to park and charge the car at home.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

There is one thing I would say about that. I do not want to disrupt the Minister's flow. He absolutely right that there is a bigger challenge in terms of installing the home-charging infrastructure. However, in the Minister's constituency, there is far greater access to public transport-----

Deputy Eamon Ryan

True.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

-----than in my constituency, unfortunately. The EV could be an excellent route to reducing emissions from transport for constituencies like mine.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I agree, but I will make the point that there is a real advantage in rural Ireland for rolling out EVs. I do not disagree. We will need an improved Connecting Ireland bus service as well as a range of other provisions, but we want as much home charging as possible because it will bring real advantages. First, it will be a lot cheaper for the person, particularly if we can get our system working in a way that ensures that when the wind is blowing strongly in the middle of the night, different signals are sent along the lines of "Switch on now", "Use it now" and "Charge it now". Some 80% of charging at the moment is done at home. We want to keep that as much as possible, but we also want to look at anyone who is doing a longer trip. West Cork is a destination as well. In the likes of peninsulas such as Beara, Mizen Head and Sheep's Head, there is a real problem because we are finding that tourists and others can get down there, but how do they get back? They do not have home charging because they will be staying in a hotel, guest house, etc. It is a real issue. That is why we have just established a fund for €100 million for the next three years.

The week before last, we started speaking to sports clubs because we think they are a good location to put in chargers. It is useful at a local level. One could go to a match or drop the kids off at training and charge up then. That is just the first of several things we are going to do. It will extend to community centres, hotels and other destination points so that we have a fast-charging network right across the country. These have to be faster chargers, and there are three grades. There is also the issue of lampposts. This may relate less to some streets in Clonakilty but more to Dublin Bay South. Home charging is good but the second phase is street lamppost charging, where there might be similar speeds to those at home. They would be used at night and would be equivalent to domestic. Then there is the issue of faster chargers, which are 50 KV plus. They are needed in sports centres, community centres, hotels, shopping areas and other areas. There is another category we need in the likes of service stations. That is starting. I have been down to west Cork in my EV, up to Donegal, down to Kerry and all over the country. It does work but we need more. They are very fast and are 150 KV plus. One can go in for ten or 20 minutes and get a cup of coffee and the car will be charged and one can make one's way onwards. We need some of those all over the country, particularly at the start points in peripheral areas and areas where there are large numbers of tourists, etc. The plan provides for us to deliver that.

The biggest constraint is the grid. The biggest constraint in some of those service stations and other areas is getting the volume of power because it is not a small volume of power. A big improvement in the grid is needed for service stations or other locations where there might be a multi-charging point. Take the Oireachtas as an example. We have just put in four charging points and we have learned straight away that it is not enough. If you talk to the Oireachtas about getting more, they will say that it is not easy to get grid in. It is a big infrastructural investment, it is not cheap and it involves quite a lot of disturbance.

There is also the issue of ESB Networks. The ESB has just launched a new national plan for their rollout of the grid. They have just employed 300 extra staff, they have a €1 billion investment programme and they are going flat out. However, the truth is that we have to get them to connect all the solar PV and heat pumps we want to be connected, including industrial heat pumps, which will be part of a big increase in electricity load, as well as the EV charging points. Scaling up the ESB's ability to deliver the grid for that is probably the biggest constraint and we will have to work with the ESB to make sure they can do that in the next three years.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

I also think there needs to be a direction to local authorities because at the moment they do not want to know about it. They do not want to put their resources into it, even though the grant will be more favourable. If you use the ESB charging app to look for those combo chargers, it shows that west Cork is a bit of a desert at the moment. This is not to be parochial because I think this is reflective of the position throughout the country. We are seeing more and more EVs on the road and I welcome that. The Chair and I have slightly different views on EVs, but I certainly welcome them because of what the Minister says about when the wind is blowing at night. If we are talking about emissions reductions and quick early wins, I really think this is one of them.

We will keep to the subject of rural and regional areas in the context of active travel. This is where the blame is often put at the Minister's feet, but he has put the funding in place. The funding is there for active travel. However, in some local authorities, the uptake has been disappointing and that was reflected when a certain amount of funding was handed back. When a community is looking for something like footpaths or shared cycle and pedestrian paths, there has to be a direction to the local authority to do everything possible to deliver that. Again, I am not being parochial, but I will use the example of Inchydoney near Clonakilty. The local authority does not want to know about it. As a community, we have approached 20 landowners and 18 of them are on board. There is funding there for it. I am convinced that if the local authority were to approach either the Department of Rural and Community Development or the Minister's Department, funding would be sought. There needs to be a stronger direction because of the amount of traffic it would take off the road from Clonakilty to Inchydoney. Inchydoney is the jewel in our crown as a tourist destination, but the only safe way to get there is by car. As long as that remains the case, the transport emissions will remain the same. I would like the Minister's opinion on that. Can we give a direction to the local authorities? Can we tell them that where there is a project, they can go for it?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I can and will do that. As I said, I have visited Cork County Council and I gave that message to them. In the end, we cannot run the active travel programme completely centrally because there is local knowledge of where the routes are, where the demand is and where the safe routes to school need to go, etc. It has to come from both management and councillors. The funding is there, but it is not beyond the limit. We put in an additional 250 staff. It took two years for it to scale up and to be able to get all the engineers, planners and so on, but they are now starting to be put in place. This Government was really radical in setting that 10% of the capital budget had to go towards active travel.

In the first year it took a while to ramp up. We were not spending the money. However, we spent it last year, and this year many more projects are looking for money than there is money available. That will be even more the case next year. We have to use it wisely and well. These section 38 experimental traffic orders offer a way to overcome many of the concerns that exist in councils throughout the country. To be able to put in a measure, to say it is temporary and review it two or three years later, or whatever period of time was agreed, has the benefit that it can overcome concerns in that people can see the change in reality. The fear of change is often worse than the change itself. They are able to see that it is not as restrictive as some might have thought and that there are real benefits. You start to notice who benefits. At the moment if you try to take some space to create safe space for cycling, you will hear from everyone that they do not want to lose that space, but they do not know who are the people who will benefit. When you put in the scheme on an experimental basis then everyone who uses it says “I can see that I benefit, and you are not going to take it away”. It is a way for the council to articulate where the actual need is.

The other benefit from it, in a budget-constrained world in which we always are, many of those experimental traffic management systems can be done at relatively low cost. It requires the reallocation of space and that requires courage. In changing space, anything to do with taking space from anyone means that someone will be inconvenienced. However, I believe that is the way to do it. The route to Inchydoney that Deputy O'Sullivan mentioned is a perfect example. As I understand there are only one or two pinch-points on it which are problems. It can be done at relatively low cost. It is using existing infrastructure in many ways. That would not be an expensive provision. It could be done fairly quickly. The advantage of this is, it is quick, not that expensive, and the benefit in doing that in Inchydoney would transform both Clonakilty and Inchydoney.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

Yes, absolutely. Hospitality is big in the regional parts of Ireland. A scheme for industry, hotels and so on exists through the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, to fund renewable forms of heating their premises. Hotels or restaurants where large amounts of gas are used for cooking do not have the option of applying for grants for a renewable form of gas. The best example is where food waste, cooked or raw, is put into a miniature anaerobic digester and that directly produces gas for cooking facilities, through anaerobic digestion. I am aware that some hotels have installed them off their own back and are thrilled with the output from them. If every hotel in Ireland had these installed I could not quantify the amount of emissions reduction, but let us say it would be 0.01%. It all adds up in respect to the cumulative approach to reducing emissions. Is that something that could be looked at? Could we incentivise a grant aid for installation of these mini anaerobic digesters? I will give MyGug.eu, a west Cork based company, a shout about these dinosaur egg shaped anaerobic digesters. They are pleasing on the eye. I was contacted recently by some schools that want to install these for gas for their laboratories and home economics. However, it can be replicated in hotels, restaurants and cafés. It all adds up. Is that something that could be incentivised?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I know the technology that Deputy O'Sullivan speaks of. It is small. The problem is that with small things, people say "ah sure it is only a small part, it is part of the hotel's costs." What is the gas for cooking? It is probably only a fraction of a percent. Do you spend your time on all the hassle or is it easier to keep the current system? However, that sort of innovation with many small measures together, is transformative. Also this past year I would say anyone who had one installed has seen a big benefit in lower gas bills. That is a good idea and I will look at it within our budget process. It makes a lot of sense to me and I will investigate it.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan

I do not wish to hold up the meeting further, so I might come in again later.

Chairman

I thank Deputy O'Sullivan. Deputy Farrell is joining us from his office.

Deputy Alan Farrell

Good morning Chair, can you hear me okay?

Chairman

We can indeed, go ahead.

Deputy Alan Farrell

I thank the Minister for coming before us. Many of the questions I was poised to ask have been covered. However, I want to pivot back to the national grid and energy generation, renewable electricity and the commitment to hit our target of 100% renewable electricity in the domestic market for 2030 and the constraints that are present in that ambition. Specifically, for offshore wind, the concern I have and that has been expressed in committee on a number of occasions is that the necessary infrastructure, both in terms of the grid and port infrastructure, is not present, and that may act as a constraint in our ambitious target of between 5 GW and 7 GW by 2030. Even a small thing could delay the delivery of much needed offshore wind energy. Will the Minister comment on that?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

As it happens I spoke to someone yesterday about our grid in Dublin. I will be somewhat local about this, if I can. He made the point that our transmission grid in Dublin dates back to the 1950s and 1960s. It was all out of Poolbeg. It radiated out of the old Poolbeg, not even the big chimneys but the old Poolbeg powerplant, and it would radial out. The people who built it then had a real vision and invested ahead. They built a really good transmission system for the 1950s and 1960s that served us in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

We now need to build a new transmission grid in Dublin. Rather than being radial from Poolbeg it needs to be somewhat circular. The scale of it needs to be fit for the middle and end of this century. That is where we are investing. This grid has to be built in the next short number of years. EirGrid is in consultation with local authorities, businesses and everyone. It is a huge project and one that dovetails very well with the development of offshore wind power because we will bring significant power into Dublin from offshore wind. At the same time we will build the grid. It is not just to cope with the offshore wind. It is to deliver all the EV charging, the solar panels, heat pumps and the electrification of our city. That project is hugely important. It will be disruptive. It involves digging roads. They are not huge cables, not as big as the water mains, but they are big enough. Delivery of that grid will require an incredible effort in the next five years. It is a key project.

With regard to offshore, the Deputy mentioned ports. I visited Rosslare Port last Friday. I will go to Cork next week. I was in Shannon and Foynes two months ago. Big, deep-water ports such as those are going to be critical for deployment of offshore wind but also, similar to Dublin, going back to what I said about when the power comes ashore, particularly in Cork and Shannon estuary, it is what we do with the power when it comes ashore. The prize here is the development of the ports as the major industrial development centres in our country. We have to be incredibly quick. We need the installation of turbines to start in 2026. To do that we need deployment ports. This needs a quayside of about 400 m or 500 m long which can take about 1,500 tonnes per square metre and which has 11 m depth in order to get larger vessels in. That is not small infrastructure. That is significant infrastructure with several hundred million euro in investment. We will deliver this. All of Government is committed to this. It is a similar moment to that when Ardnacrusha power station was built. It is that scale of ambition. Central to it is the port and the grid.

Deputy Alan Farrell

Are there concrete plans across Departments actually to invest that level of money in our port infrastructure? Who is responsible for it? Is it some sort of arrangement with a third party?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

There are very advanced plans. Much of it will be commercial development, some of the opportunity may be for deployment of wind turbines in other waters in the UK or France so it is not just a commercial opportunity for what we do in Irish waters.

There will be good commercial revenue from that. The exact financing mechanism to deliver it, be it a combination of State or private funding, is what we are working on at the moment and it will be part of the whole deployment strategy. Beneath that again, there is a whole level of operational maintenance ports and smaller ports which will be of more ongoing commercial benefit for the local community.

Deputy Alan Farrell

The Minister understands that the only port on the island that is currently capable of any level of support for the delivery of offshore wind is Belfast, and while that is not necessarily a bad thing for the all-Ireland economy, clearly, the State needs to put up money in order to deliver this, given it is a national ambition. The Minister says the plans are advanced and I very much look forward to them becoming available. I just want to make sure we are not relying too much on the private sector to deliver what is a critical part of the jigsaw of the national grid.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

No, we are not. Some of the ports are private ports or private lands within the ports. They too have a real potential role and they have to manage and assess the commercial operation or commercial business. We want to allow for innovation within ports as to where is the best place for this to take place. The Chairman was at the launch of a major study by Bechtel, an international energy infrastructure consultancy. The report it did for Shannon Foynes Port was top drawer. It was visionary and long-term in its thinking, and showed that Shannon Foynes has huge potential for development but also places like Tarbert, Moneypoint and other jetties - for example, Shannon Airport has a jetty out into the port. I spoke to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, only yesterday and we said the potential for us to do something similar in Cork would be opportune. We have to think strategically about our ports as real centres of our economic development, our climate response and our energy security. It is a European-scale project because the rest of Europe is looking to us as a country which will likely have surplus energy, so that scale of ambition is what we have.

Deputy Alan Farrell

I have a final question in regard to offshore wind before I move on to forestry. I have a concern, having spoken to a number of potential providers of offshore about the sites they have been granted versus the ones that will be coming up in the future. I believe the competition for those sites may be problematic in terms of the ability of the firms to deliver, which impacts the viability of those projects. I know the licensing that had been granted for the initial stages of delivery would far exceed the target of 7 GW by 2030. However, are there concerns within the Department or the Government as to the viability of some of these projects, given there is competition between firms in terms of the ability to deliver for 2030?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I will broadly outline the approach. We have phases 1, 2 and 3. Phase 1 has already started. It is seven relevant projects that have been in planning for the last ten or 15 years, with one on the west coast and six on the east. They are all in the auction process at the moment and we expect there will be competitive bidding to get the best price for the Irish public. They are sites that were already in planning ten or 15 years ago, as I said.

In the second phase, we will move towards a more State-led system where the State will say this is the sort of area where we need to develop. What we do not want is a kind of Klondike system where everyone runs out and says “This is my bit of the sea”, or they put a post somewhere and say “That is my area and no one else can go near it.” It is much better where the State helps all developers in terms of the environmental assessment, what is the best place that minimises the environmental risks, what is the best place that maximises the grid connection and other development potential to develop hydrogen, ammonia or other energy uses from it, and that all developers are allowed to be part of that competitive tendering process.

Phase 3 will go even bigger again and we will really integrate our marine protected areas, environmental planning and grid development strategies, and increase the scale of resources, particularly as we go to floating wind and go towards the west and north west. That will mean it is really part of an integrated, designed system to catch the wind, convert it and ship it one way or the other, at home and also abroad. It has to be a State-led, long-term project because no one else can bring that vision or maximise the benefit to the Irish people.

Deputy Alan Farrell

There are two final points that I want to make. One is in regard to forestry, in particular our targets versus the reality that we are facing, notwithstanding any improvements that have been made towards the latter end of 2022. The figures I have going back to 2016 show a dramatic reduction in afforestation targets. My understanding is that in 2021, we were at 25% of our target, and I do not have the figure for 2022. Will the Minister comment in regard to the knock-on effect that has, not just in terms of the ability of the State to meet its afforestation targets, but also in terms of decarbonising construction, something the committee has spent a great deal of time on, and in regard to the promotion of timber frame dwellings versus the use of carbon-heavy concrete? Currently, as I know from the committee this week, 48% of houses delivered in 2022 were done with timber frame, but I assume the vast majority of that timber frame is being imported. I ask the Minister to comment.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Forestry is complicated with regard to decarbonisation. In the first years after a forest is planted, it is actually a net source of emissions because the land has typically been drained, depending on the soil type, and it takes time for the wood to grow. It is more in the latter part of a forest’s life that we start to see the benefits in terms of decarbonisation. The Deputy is right that the figures for planting were low in 2021 and 2022 but my expectation is that we will start to see that radically improve because the new programme is very significant in its supports and benefits. We have to go to 8,000 ha from 2023 onwards and the land use review will show that being further evolved and developed.

The Deputy mentioned the issue of what the wood is used for. There is a very significant volume of wood coming from the plantations, which are very large, given we were planting almost 25,000 ha a year in the mid-1990s. A lot of that wood will be felled in the next couple of decades and will provide very significant, good quality lumber for the Irish construction industry, as I understand it, and it will not all be imported lumber. While there has been an increase in timber frame houses and timber use in construction, I do not think we have been ambitious enough and we will be going much further. Neighbouring countries are already doing this so it is not unproven technology. The benefits of embedded timber in construction materials, be it laminated timber or cut timber, are manifold and I expect that number to radically increase as part of our climate response. We have the timber and it is in the construction industry where the change needs to take place.

Deputy Alan Farrell

I completely agree with the Minister. We need to dramatically increase our ambition in regard to construction.

I am conscious that my time is about to expire. Deputy O'Sullivan was talking about local authorities and their role in the roll-out of public charging points at the various levels. I refer the Minister to an article that I am sure he saw in The Irish Times on 17 January which related to a poor response from local authorities, with just four local authorities in Dublin city, Louth, Tipperary and Meath taking up the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland on its grant scheme. In defence of the local authorities, I am conscious there are some local authorities that have done work outside of the SEAI in delivering this but it is not uniform.

With just 38 points delivered through SEAI grants by means of a scheme that is three years old, is it that the local authorities do not have the capacity to do this? Is it that they are prioritising other areas before they get into public infrastructure delivery or is there something wrong with the scheme?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

There is probably something wrong with the scheme. I cannot remember the grant level. Was it €5,000, €7,000 or some such figure?

Deputy Alan Farrell

It was €5,000.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

It was €5,000, which was probably too low. I am sorry; that is not good enough. If a local authority really wanted to do it, it could have done so. It was disappointing. We have amended it, however. My understanding is that Fingal is one of the leading, more ambitious and better councils, which the Deputy will be glad to hear. We should go with those who are willing to lead. One of the evolutions we are putting in place is to move in this direction. One project was delivered in Finglas by Dublin City Council. I do not know if the Deputy has seen it. It is a charging and car-sharing station but also an e-bike-sharing and charging station. It is on municipal ground so it obviously has good electricity grid connection. It is open to various car-sharing clubs or companies. One of the projects we are looking to develop using the climate fund is to radically expand that model across the country. It is not just about switching to EVs. We need to use this moment of opportunity to switch to car sharing and e-bike use, particularly in urban areas where charging is more difficult but also where the demand will be really good for that sort of service. I expect that to be one of the next key initiatives for local authorities. This involves a large number of municipal car-sharing charging points, which promote both car sharing and the use of electricity and e-bikes. That could be one of the most important evolutions. It is very important that we work with local authorities on this to get municipal land banks and places to put them in or get them next to other services. We could look at where we put them and how we design, develop and build them. The ZEVI scheme will be central to what the Department is doing, but local authorities will also be there. That project is one of the most interesting. It will be full funded and it needs to be rolled out in the next three years.

Deputy Alan Farrell

In terms of a takeaway or ambition to improve upon the public charging points scheme, it has been accepted now that there is an issue that the level of support from the SEAI is not sufficient for some local authorities. I acknowledge that the Minister mentioned Fingal-----

Chairman

I am going to push this on-----

Deputy Alan Farrell

-----because to be fair, the council is doing excellent work but maybe is not drawing down funds from this particular source.

Chairman

I thank Deputy Farrell.

Deputy Alan Farrell

I am sorry, Chairman. This is my final point.

Chairman

I am going to move along.

Deputy Alan Farrell

Is it possible for the Minister to provide a commitment that a review of that particular scheme will take place in terms of the uptake from local authorities?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Yes, it is already happening.

Chairman

We will have another session specifically on transport during which, I am sure, we will discuss this in more detail. With regard to Deputy Farrell's point on the offshore opportunity, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Coveney, will appear before the committee next Wednesday at 5.30 p.m. He will have a very significant role in enabling private sector investment and the development of the supply chain. That will be a very important session, which I am sure the Deputy will be interested in attending. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, takes a very special interest in the offshore opportunity we have. That will be a very good session.

I will speak to the point about the local government challenge, which has been expressed with respect to the roll-out of EV charging. I would differ slightly from colleagues in that I am of the view that not only do we need large numbers of EVs, we also need to evolve our policy a little and become somewhat more discerning. The Minister alluded to that. The challenge in urban areas is that it is harder with terraced houses and a lack of driveways and so on. As Deputy O'Sullivan pointed out, however, the need for EVs is not perhaps as great in our urban areas because of the availability of walking and cycling networks and public transport. The challenge relates not only to EVs but also to the active travel, responsibility for which lies with local government. This goes back to the point about other Departments and their role in advancing meaningful climate action. They are at an arm's remove from the Minister, and another Minister has responsibility for local government. Therefore, it comes back to that point again. I am sure we will bring it up with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, when he appears before this committee in a few weeks' time.

We are seeing really good projects stumbling week in, week out, particularly in the active travel and public transport area in this country, because of the political difficulty of delivering them. I certainly acknowledge the Minister's point that local knowledge is important. We need that buy-in from councillors and local management. At some point, however, we have to say that this infrastructure is incredibly important and it cannot fall at the hurdle of local politics. We are seeing some really good schemes in County Limerick and we are going through those challenges. A really exciting scheme is going before the council next Monday. I am very hopeful that it will be supported. It will be one of the most significant active travel projects outside Dublin and including Dublin, because it links the suburb of Raheen-Dooradoyle with the city centre. It involves some very hard decisions around how we use road space. I am confident that the councillors in Limerick will support this project and realise that while there will be an impact, of course, to people living along the route in terms of moving on-street parking, there will also be a huge benefit to the city that is far greater than the impact. It is a challenge, however, if the lack of ambition that might exist persists on the management side of local authorities across the country or if there is hesitancy and difficulty on the political side. What do we do then if these projects stumble? I welcome the Minister's comments on the experimental traffic orders. I will be interested to hear more about those and when the Minister envisages the regulation for those orders will come in. I would certainly welcome more of his thoughts on that piece.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

We have taken so many powers from local government that we must be careful. I do not know if that has been good or correct. We need strong local authorities. We cannot force them. I go back to what I said earlier. We are moving into a phase now where some really good projects will be coming forward all over the country. If a council is not able to make some of the hard decisions and do the innovative thing then we should just be upfront and say that is fine, we will switch the money to another country where they are willing to do it. That is a better approach rather than trying to centralise everything and design from Dublin.

I mentioned the pathfinder projects to Senator Higgins earlier. They are a really good example of that. We are being really clear with the local authorities that are project managing these 35 projects that if they are not hitting timelines or not on track, then we will say that we are sorry, they are not on track. These projects are designed to show how local authorities can be fast. I do not have the details in front of me but one of those projects in Limerick is connecting the three colleges. I do not know the particular scheme the Deputy is talking about but it seems to me that this might be one leg of that. If it is coming from Raheen-Dooradoyle, it must be going past Mary Immaculate College into the city centre, and I presume down O'Connell Street. That would be a transformative project for Limerick because it will not only connect the three colleges but all those places. I am sure many people working in Raheen who are living in another part of the city would cycle out in the morning. It would be transformative. There are already plans for the city centre in Limerick; this would deliver it. Many of those communities out by the Technological University of the Shannon were cut off by lack of access to the city. The likes of Moyross and elsewhere could use that as part of the improved infrastructure.

We are putting in a new bus service and a train station there. Let us also put in a high-quality active travel link as it is just beside the Technological University of the Shannon. We would start to get multiple benefits. I hope Limerick City and County Council supports it on Monday but it is up to the local authority and we cannot force it. If it does not support it we will say that Limerick is not going in that direction and we will put it in Cork, Galway or wherever. This is the way to deal with it.

It is difficult to discuss experimental traffic orders because they are the subject of court discussion as we speak. We have to be sensitive and careful in what we say. Section 38 of the Act allows for experimental traffic orders. The Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2021 is before the Seanad, and I see that Senators Lynn Boylan and Pauline O'Reilly are present. We must conclude our deliberations on the legislation. If we can get it through the Seanad, it will be enacted. We can then use section 38 of the existing Act, whereby the Minister can set out regulations to empower local authorities on where they might apply. Nothing is stopping us from using section 38 at present. Approximately 1,000 schemes throughout the country use section 38. If there is any legal doubt or uncertainty about it I hope the regulations we will set out will help overcome it. It is a very important tool in the armour of local authorities. If a local authority is concerned and nervous about a difficult decision it should try it for two or three years and then, if necessary, remove it.

Without going into specifics because it is subject to court discussion, there was a very high profile case recently on Strand Road where there was a lot of concern about the impact of putting in a facility there. That facility has not yet been put in place but a separate project involving roadworks or drainage in the area has effectively delivered the exact same traffic management circumstances. It will be interesting to see whether it has delivered on the fears of some people. I do not think it has. Obviously, we must keep monitoring it. It is an example of how doing things to see what the change would be might show that it would not be all that was feared. We might start to see some of the benefits. This is what experimental traffic orders can deliver.

Chairman

The evidence from the UK is quite interesting. Low traffic neighbourhoods were very controversial with 85% to 90% of the public absolutely opposed to them but when the experimental systems were put in place 85% to 90% of people did not want them removed. The power of experimental traffic orders can be significant.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

I want to ask about the retrofitting plan. We rehearsed some of this previously with regard to some of the differences between the approaches of the Government and my party to this. I do not want to go over old ground. Whatever way we cut it up, when we get to 2030, a lot of people who are using kerosene now will very likely still be using it. This is because they are ineligible for existing schemes or will be waiting for them or because they do not have the money for the type of retrofitting required to move to a heat pump. The SEAI states that heat pumps are the only show in town and argues against having an intermediary step.

The ESRI made a presentation in the audiovisual room my understanding of which is that a case was made to look at alternatives. If we look only at reducing emissions then heat pumps and district heating are the answer but if we look at other outputs, such as affordability, people living in energy poverty, the ability of people to access existing schemes and their willingness to vacate their property for a deep retrofit and to get a heat pump installed, the case for an in-between step can be made. Deputy O'Sullivan mentioned some possibilities. The Minister has heard the case for hydrogenated vegetable oils. We have discussed this previously. There is also liquefied petroleum gas and bio liquefied petroleum gas. These could be an intermediary step to get people away from kerosene, on the understanding that it could be the middle of the next decade before certain households are in a position to afford or get a heat pump. Something I heard at the briefing in the audiovisual room was that if there is going to be another way, now is the time to make a decision on it. We are losing time that is of the essence. Is the Government thinking about this or looking at it? I would like to get a sense of this.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

We are. The future for Irish heating is in heat pumps. A total of 85% of new houses have heat pumps, and this figure will rise. There is an incredible efficiency gain. It sounds obvious and simple. When an electric fan is used to push the outside air through the coil-----

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

I accept that.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

-----it just works. It is an incredibly efficient system. It is incredibly cost-effective. In a country such as Ireland, where we have so much renewable wind power and we have the ability to switch it on and off in response to the wind, the prize is that we would have one of the most efficient, clean and economic systems going. Heat pumps are being used throughout the world. I was proud to co-chair a meeting of the International Energy Agency yesterday on the gas crisis. So many Ministers said we need the industrial output of heat pumps in order to facilitate a massive expansion. This technology is taking off across the world, and it will work here. Heat pumps are like fridges. We do not need to go near them, they do not break down that much and they work very well.

On their own, heat pumps will not be enough because many buildings may not be suitable. There is also real benefit from district heating. According to the heat study, up to half of housing could use district heating if we really went for it. We are always looking at Denmark but it has shown how district heating can work in a way that is good for householders. It is very efficient and economic. These two will be the mainstay. As Deputy O'Sullivan said, there may be examples where local anaerobic digestion could lead to gas-fired systems but that would be very local. The demand for heat is great. We must be very careful about promising that something like this could deliver the scale of heat that we would need.

Then we come to the likes of hydrogenated vegetable oils. The concern here is that there is a limited supply and we must be careful about where the supply is from. We must be very careful that it is not from a source that leads to the destruction of rainforests in a far distant part the world. There is a valuable and viable environmental source from waste oils, cooking oil, tallow and other materials. The area where we have the bigger challenge is probably transport. This comes back to what I said earlier about transport being the most difficult issue. If there is a limited quantity of hydrogenated vegetable oils, which there will be, rather than using them in heating, it would be better to use them in the transport sector, where we have hard-to-crack problems in respect of the likes of haulage. This is why there is such an emphasis on heat pumps and district heating as the way forward.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

What about liquefied petroleum gas, bio liquefied petroleum gas and moving people from kerosene to bottled gas?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Where does bio liquefied petroleum gas come from?

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

Wherever it comes from, surely it would be more sustainable than kerosene.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I do not what the term "bio" means in that context. We must be careful in the context of making what we are doing very clear to the public. The last thing we want to do is confuse them, make false promises or find out we have a solution that will actually have knock-on effects.

I am not opposed to any potential solution but we need to be rigorous and clear on what exactly that means.

Deputy Darren O'Rourke

There is no argument that there are a cohort of people who are exposed, who are living in poverty or close to poverty, who are on low incomes in cold homes and who will not have a retrofitted home or a heat pump by 2030. There is an argument they could have a shallow retrofit and an improvement on their heating systems that is not a heat pump that could be done at low cost and that could be done tomorrow.

The Government is building power plants and I want to make the transition to a zero emissions economy and energy and heating systems, but if we have a two-track approach that leaves a whole pile of people behind, then I can see that being divisive and problematic. I refer to the case for hydrotreated vegetable oil, HVO, which the Minister has made his point on, or liquefied petroleum gas, LPG, or as some refer to some element of it, bio LPG, and I recognise the considerations the Minister has to make in all of that, including the sustainability of it and fossil fuels. The most green fossil fuel is still a fossil fuel and we recognise that. Within the context of a transition, I am concerned, and it is not just me, that there will be a cohort of people left behind and for whom we are not providing a real solution in any meaningful way. That is other than saying there is technology on the way and that some time in the distant future, as yet to be defined when, there may be a solution for them. On managing the transition, that is something that has to be grasped.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I agree with the point the Deputy started with, that there is a particular cohort, those on the lowest incomes and in the poorest houses. They are the ones most at risk and the ones who we have to target most, but that is what we will do. There is significant funding. A total of 55% of the carbon tax is guaranteed towards this for people in social housing or on low incomes. There is a 100% grant available for them. We have to target the poorest people in the poorest performing houses and our first objective is to get those done. That is the way to do it rather than keeping the door open for whatever different type of fossil fuel.

Chairman

The Minister alluded earlier to the challenge we have in the communication aspect of this. We did a few sessions on this at the end of last year and we will have another one soon that is focused on advertising and how we regulate same, or at least encourage it such that we do not have greenwashing and the public is informed about consumer choices. There is a question about advertising and its role, but the bigger issue is the promotion of the challenge we have in why we are doing what we are doing and communicating the detail of that to the public. There is not much in the climate action plan on that and there is nothing in it on advertising anyway. Perhaps the Minister could speak to the bigger promotional challenge we have.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

That is the biggest challenge. There is no shortage of technology and the economic case is strong. The fear of change and the protection of existing interests are the biggest challenges, as are getting public support and buy-in. I believe the public are there with us but they are uncertain as to what it means and what it means for them. The first thing we should not do is put it all on them. The environmental movement in general made a mistake going back 30 years by putting it down to individual responsibility and asking if people were doing the right thing such as purchasing the right shampoo or whatever. It is impossible to do it all by yourself and we should also address the source of the problem. In this country we have done a good job in ending exploration licences for oil and gas and so on. You start at the source rather than at the consumer end but it is still a real challenge and problem.

One of the things that has worked, which is ongoing and we will learn and keep doing it, started with the citizen's assembly and listening to local people. The national dialogue on climate change and the conversations we are having on climate change are working because they are open and transparent. Just as we are providing information here, at those sessions we are presenting to, for example, the task forces on offshore energy, heating buildings or sustainable mobility. We engage regularly with a range of different stakeholders to outline what we are doing and the latest update and information. In a way, it is part of the governance structures. We work well in this country in partnership with the likes of trade unions, farming organisations and others. They are actively engaged in that and that is important.

One of those task forces deals with communications, so we discuss it there. Some of the research and behavioural analysis Pete Lunn and the ESRI are doing is good and our Department is backing that up by doing a lot of work and research in this area. Of the six task forces we have created, the first that was set up was the offshore wind task force because there was such an immediate urgency to it. The second was on sustainable mobility and the third was on heat. The just transition task force is in the second phase and it will take on the role of delivering on that and then there is the task force on the land use review. We have also established the climate communications task force and we are working with the Department of the Taoiseach as well as within our Department because it has a unit and a particular responsibility on this. It is the most difficult and challenging one but there is a lot of work going on in that area.

Chairman

I will bring the conversation back to the floating offshore challenge we have. The Minister mentioned the Bechtel report earlier, which sets out the vision for the Shannon Estuary and the west coast's enduring regime, which by and large will be floating technology. Wind Energy Ireland had its conference yesterday and the day before, to which the Minister gave the keynote address. From speaking to some people who were at that, they felt the floating offshore issue was being pushed and a policy statement is expected next year. They would say that, for floating offshore technology to get going, it needs the maritime area consents to be issued for those phase 2 projects by the end of this year to enable the surveys and so on in 2024. That is how we get alignment with the 2030 targets. Is there capacity to bring forward that ambition in the are of floating offshore technology?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I was thinking earlier on that we have to deliver a lot by 2025. It is similar in offshore technology in the sense that the first auctions for phase 1 projects are already up and running. We will have to conclude those and then projects will go into planning this year. The next phase will be further projects on the east and south-east coast, where areas are approved in the process, but that auction will be next year and we need it to go into the planning system then in a similar way to phase 1. During the subsequent year we will have to do the auction for what is likely to go towards the enduring regime Vote. We will not set out the areas here now but it will be to the west and south and as part of the massive scaling-up project. That is the timeline and it works because we also need other Departments to feed in. We need the environmental designation of the special areas of conservation, SACs, and special protection areas, SPAs. We need work on the marine protected areas, in the designation of those areas and in the de-map of those areas, and data are also needed.

The signal is clear and real that we will go for this at scale, particularly with floating generation, because it is where the real resource is, especially for the export capability. No one is looking to delay this. We need to get it right in the next two years, or three years at a maximum, with an entire, enduring regime set up and starting to be delivered. The time on that will be well spent.

I keep coming back to the shortage of mariners.

Chairman

The industry is essentially telling the State to get out of its way. It is chomping at the bit. It is saying it can start work, but if it cannot get the marine area consents, then it is being held back.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

That is why MARA has to be up and running now. It is legislated for and interviews for its CEO were held last week. Whoever gets the job needs to hit the ground running.

Chairman

Is there potential to bring forward the floating offshore policy to this year?

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I cannot remember the exact timeline for it but phase 2 will come out in the next week or two and then there is a series of steps. We have to deliver the hydrogen strategy this year. We also have to think about how we use the power. Of the 7 GW, we have designated that we want innovation for 2 GW. We have to develop further interconnection. The Greenlink interconnector to Wales and the Celtic link to France will not be the limit of our ambition. We need new interconnectors.

We need industry to be clear and to come forward with specific projects, particularly for those 2 GW and for conversion into molecules rather than electrons. We need industry to come forward with projects for which contracts can be issued. Industry has a role. To come back to what was said earlier, this is best when it is State led because consistency and good planning are needed. One of the big challenges is environmental planning. For the State to take a lead in that helps industry because we are better placed to get that right, to share the data and to make sure it facilitates development. To be clear, we are in a race. The British Government is ahead of us and wants to accelerate. The German, Belgian, Dutch and French, both our neighbours and those farther afield, are all looking to develop our own power as one of the answers to Putin's war.

Chairman

Could accelerating it be looked at in the context of the bigger west coast enduring regime if there are potential hold-ups this year and next in the policy and marine area consents? We can then at least not be accused of holding back these developers who say they want to get involved as quickly as possible.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

We have a similar ambition with regard to speed, but it will be done in phases, including the offshore renewable energy development plan, OREDP, and be connected to the hydrogen and interconnection strategy. For it to work, an all-of-government approach and all supports are needed. A whole series of things needs to happen in the next three years.

Deputy Sean Sherlock

I was watching the Minister's intervention on the monitor in my office. I am especially interested in offshore wind. The Minister will know there is a particular group of stakeholders in the Cork region who are eager to greenlight projects off the south and south-west coast. I am always trying to understand the specifics of timelines. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong. He has created MARA, the licences and the consents. Once those consents are given, he can then start to drive on the projects. If we are looking at the climate action plan and the 2030 and 2050 targets and so on, I have a fear the clock will tick down. I seek reassurance from the Minister that we will not overshoot the timelines by dint of not having enough urgency, as I perceive it, in getting those consents up and running across a wider platform. The way I perceive it is that it is all about the east coast at the moment, which is good and laudable, but could the Minister not, at the same time, start the same work and get mapping under way for the south and south-west coast and do it all at the same time? He could pile on the consents and get it done as a matter of urgency, given the potential for energy independence that exists, arising from the potential offering from offshore floating wind.

I am trying to nail the Minister down on specifics because, if I am reading him correctly and we are talking about a three-phase approach, I am not seeing where those phases will be reached and in what year. I do not mean this in a pejorative sense but it seems still to be too vague and aspirational. If we can nail it down, entities such as Simply Blue and others I have been in touch with can get on with their work and get the mapping done, get consents and start putting infrastructure on the water in order that we can meet our energy needs as a matter of urgency. I feel frustrated and that is what I am trying to say to the Minister.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

We will publish much more detailed phases and timelines in the next couple of weeks. That will help. I was at that conference yesterday. Last week I attended another event relating to the marine, which addressed floating wave and tidal energy as well as offshore wind. There are always packed rooms with real expertise. The number of people from Cork was fascinating. There was a phenomenal range of different companies and ambition. That is all to the good. Cork Harbour has historically been a maritime centre. The Titanic left from Cork Harbour because Cobh provides a safe, deepwater port. It did not go so well in the North Atlantic. Cork Harbour is an incredible strategic asset. It also has energy infrastructure for our pharmaceutical industry, refineries and power generation. It has potential quays. Work needs to be done in Cork Harbour to get facilities in place to be able to deploy this. It also has an old gasfield which could be used for gas storage or carbon storage. It also has access to deep waters with good wind. It has a huge, historical industrial development capability.

Deputy Sean Sherlock

We know all that.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Cork will be the centre of it. The question is about getting it right. We will do what we did onshore. We said we would do a series of auctions onshore. We have rolled out each auction and will do another this year. That step-by-step approach works and gives the best certainty, rather than promising we will do everything at once, which is not feasible. First, we do not have the resources; secondly, Cork Harbour is not ready; and third, we learn as we go and we prove we can build up the resources. Doing everything in sequence is not doing it slowly. This is not a small project. It will be huge. There is an auction this year, which we are already doing, and the year after. We have to get the consents and the environmental mapping and planning correct as part of that. The biggest challenge we have is probably in An Bord Pleanála and MARA.

The biggest challenge is that the same planning expertise and marine biologists we might want to employ in An Bord Pleanála are probably working in some of the companies in Cork the Deputy mentioned. That is not a bad thing, but it is a reality and a real constraint. Doing it in a sequenced way where we get the environmental planning right is the best and right way to do it. We have all hands on deck and are at action stations now, in the Shannon Estuary, in Cork, on the east coast and even farther afield.

At the meeting I attended at the Alex Hotel, it was interesting the number of people there from Mayo and Donegal, and there were people there from Scotland, Wales and Sweden as well. The big prize is in the west and north west in terms of where the heavy winds are and the deep waters are out far. That can be serviced from Cork and much of the power can come back into Cork. This is absolutely central to our climate plans.

It is not the only issue. We also have to deliver 5 GW of solar, another 4 GW of wind, plus a whole lot of pump storage and also grid development on shore to make it work. As we know, investing in our electricity grid has not been popular in this country in the past ten years. EirGrid did a good job. It got the Celtic interconnector into Cork without a single objection, if I recall correctly, in the planning system. That was a remarkable achievement. We have to build it now. When we build that interconnector in, that is all the more the signal that Cork is where it will go.

Deputy Sean Sherlock

I am not being facetious. I appreciate that the Minister has a deep knowledge of Cork. Extrapolating from the Minister’s response, it seems that the Minister wants to sequence this. The Minister also spoke about resources and deploying resources to the effort around all of this. I perceive that there is not the requisite number of personnel for the effort that is required across the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, the statutory bodies and within Government Departments. Respectfully through the Chair, I would suggest that if there was an increase in the number of staff, for instance, to be deployed on this effort because it is such a massive opportunity for this island, that would go a long way towards dealing with possibly allowing for a greater throughput of licences and consents to be issued and so on. I respectfully suggest that Government is not deploying enough people through its agencies and Departments to this effort.

There are too many constraints such that it forces the Minister to be perhaps less ambitious in what he seeks to achieve. If the Minister had more people and bodies put to this effort, we could potentially be much further down the road. In other words, if I were the Minister now, I would be going to the Department of Public Expenditure, NPD Delivery and Reform saying that I need to double or treble the team because this is about Ireland incorporated, future energy and security of energy supply. I would say that I want more people for this effort and I want sanction for that. That is what I would be suggesting, respectfully. Correct me if I am wrong.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

The first thing I did in Government two and half years ago was to go to the then Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and say that I wanted to double our Department. We did it.

Deputy Sean Sherlock

I am talking specifically about this bespoke issue.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

Yes. Our Department has doubled in size. The big increase has been in energy, and the big increase within that has been in offshore energy. We have a massive new team of capable civil servants working on this. The Deputy is right, though. The biggest challenge now is probably in An Bord Pleanála and MARA in getting the resource. MARA is up and running with more than 20 staff already in place. We picked a good chair and I am confident that there will be no shortage of ambition with the chair and whoever the chief executive will be.

Deputy Sean Sherlock

I absolutely agree.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

An Bord Pleanála has been more challenging, as we all know. I agree. I keep referring to a reality. I think we have 2,000 people in the Central Bank and 200 in An Bord Pleanála. We are fighting the last war – the financial crash. We need to be fighting the next war, which is decarbonising. For that, An Bord Pleanála needs to scale up. Everyone agrees on the difficulty. Find me 20 marine planning experts tomorrow and I will take them on, if they are good – we all would. I would take on 200. However, they are not that easily available. Even going to international waters to get them is difficult because everyone else is also similarly scaling up.

When I was Minister last, I was proud that in tough financial times we invested in MaREI in Cork and in the school beside the naval base in Haulbowline. We have skills and resources in Cork in terms of training people up, but that constraint is real. However, I do not think it will stop us delivering the three-phase approach I mentioned in the next three years. That will be delivered. It has to be.

Deputy Sean Sherlock

The Science Foundation Ireland-funded MaREI research entity was set up between 2011 and 2016, just for clarity.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I will go back and show the Deputy the decision that was made.

Deputy Sean Sherlock

That was on my watch as Minister of State with responsibility for innovation and research, but sin scéal eile.

I take the point the Minister made. I thank the Chair for letting me in. You can see the ambition when you meet the people who the Minister talked about across the sector. The level of ambition around this is phenomenal. I take the point the Minister made in respect of constraints around expertise. However, I also respectfully suggest that what we want to see in the south-south west are those licences and consents becoming operational and that mapping yesterday because of the potential there. There has never been a greater time capturing the zeitgeist where energy, academia and private and public finance have all come together in one effort to create something that is part of this industrial revolution now. It is frustrating sometimes to see the fact that if it was not for greater resources, we could be doing this much quicker. That is the frustration that I have.

Deputy Eamon Ryan

I share that frustration. However, do not underestimate our ability to scale up quickly and be good at this. We are one of the leading countries in the world in integrating renewable power by any measure and assessment of the ability to deploy and catch renewable power. We are right up at the top. While we are late coming to the game on the offshore - the UK, Dutch, Belgians, Germans and others are some number of years ahead of us – we have the ability to catch up. One of the reasons is because we are a small, flexible country where everyone is on a similar page at the moment, but also because we have the resource. Just look at the basic facts of where the wind is at scale, particularly with floating, because that resource is big in the Atlantic. Floating still needs development. It is not as developed as fixed-bottom. It is happening. That is absolutely right. However, we need to be honest and accurate with people. Is it as advanced as fixed-bottom? No. Will it be? I am absolutely convinced and we will be in the lead, particularly in the likes of Cork, Shannon, Mayo and Donegal because that is where the power is. That is the prize. We will be good at this.

Chairman

Nobody else is indicating to come in, so we will finish it there. I thank the Minister and his officials for attending today and engaging with the committee. It was a thorough, informative and useful session. It was an important session in the context of the ongoing challenge to achieve our 2030 targets and beyond to 2050 as well.

The committee will meet as a select committee next Tuesday to discuss the Estimates. On Wednesday, the Minister, Deputy Coveney, will be in, as I mentioned, at 5.30 p.m. to speak to the challenge in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with respect to climate action. It is an important role. We have been talking much about the offshore challenge and much of it will fall to his Department. We hope to have the Minister, Deputy Ryan, back to speak more to the transport challenge we have which, as he identified, is perhaps the hardest of all the sectors. We will get into that in more detail. The time is to be arranged still.

The joint committee adjourned at 12.09 p.m. until 5.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 22 February 2023.