102. Deputy Ciarán Ahern asked the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment the reason, according to analysis from the Environmental Protection Agency, Ireland will only deliver a 23% reduction in emissions by 2030, not the 51% target in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021, or the 42% target in the EU effort sharing regulation; how the State plans to finance the potential fines of up to €26 billion for missing EU targets; the actions he will take to remedy the situation and reduce our target emissions gap; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30748/25]

Sentiment score: 0.06

My question is the same. I am happy for the Minister to answer about how the gap is widening.

Sentiment score: 0.29

The Minister referred to moving faster and we agree with him. He mentioned 1990, 1995 and 2005 figures, but these are irrelevant. The only figures that we are concerned with in this House anymore are the 2018 base levels. We need a 51% reduction from them by 2030. We are miles away from it and we are getting further. Is the Minister worried about the gap between promise and delivery? Can he tell us once and for all whether he has given up on the 51% reduction target by 2030? His own climate action plan for this year if implemented in full, which is vanishingly unlikely, will only bring us to reductions of 42% by 2030. What is he going to do? What radical steps is he going to take to increase the speed of delivery as he has pointed to here?

Sentiment score: 0.07

Not only is the Government failing in this regard, it is also regrettably going backwards. Only last year, it was predicted that the State could reach 29% emission reductions. This year, it was reduced to 23% by the EPA. Our target for 2030 is that 80% of our energy will be renewable. The EPA is telling us that now only approximately 68% will be able to be renewable by 2030. When it comes to transport, the Minister referenced the number of EVs on the roads. The EPA is not even bothering with the previous goal of almost 1 million cars on the road; it is now talking about approximately 650,000 EVs on the road by 2030 at best. It feels that the Minister is pursuing policies that are pushing us further and further away from reaching our climate goals through the Government's pursuit of road over rail and obsession with energy hungry data centres. There is change in policy on fracked gas and the green light was given for liquefied natural gas, LNG, terminals and increased fire powered generation. I call on the Minister again to change course.

Sentiment score: 0.08