Eamon Ryan

Even if you switch all the cars to electric...

you still have to, you still have all the emissions about all the new concrete you pour as you move outwards and outwards and outwards.

And that's why I think what Minister Chambers did won't work.

he could have tried to just open the climate law or abandon it, you know, kind of, but that would have been politically very sensitive.

I don't think they would have got a vote 132 to 15.

So instead, they've amended it from this, through this mechanism.

But the problem is, for them,

The bill had what I would call a belt and braces approach.

So the belt was the section 15 that every public body had to make sure their projects were in line with the climate plan.

But the braces were that the ministers responsible for each area have to show that if they're off track in their emissions, how they will change course so that we get back on track.

Transport is the area where we're not meeting our climate targets.

It's about a fifth of our emissions.

It's not decreasing.

And Minister Dara O'Brien, Minister of Transport, has under the law a responsibility to come into the Oireachtas Committee and show what changes to policy he will make to get us back on track.

Yes, he does.

So I think it's actually, they haven't actually, because they couldn't go in and change the climate law in that way, it wouldn't have been politically acceptable.

But by doing it in this sideways way, they haven't actually delivered a legal certainty.

And I think there's a real, well, I think the Oireachtas Transport Commission has to ask the simple question.

How are you going to meet our transport emissions if we're building all these big roads that is setting our country on a car-dependent future, which is inherently unsustainable?

No.