Climate Action Plan
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-17
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

There is an issue there. We have been warned about it. We have to act on that warning. We have an obligation to people, jobs, the economy and society to heed that and that is why that is going ahead.
We have made a lot of progress. The population has increased by 50%. We have grown our economy very substantially over the past two or three decades and our emissions are coming down. We have successfully proven that you can decouple economic growth from climate and population growth. Even though people are giving out that we may not reach our target, it is quite a remarkable achievement in many respects because we are one of the few countries that is growing exponentially in population relative to where we were.
On Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh's question, what is interesting is all the areas she is urging us to act on - environmental, farming, retrofitting and so on. We spend about €1.5 billion on the ACRES programme, which is good for environmental farming. Of that, 60% is from the Exchequer. Does the Deputy know what helps to fund that? It is the carbon tax, which every now and again Sinn Féin opposes.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:38+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-17