Climate Action Plan
Dail Éireann — 2023-01-24
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Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West

I thank Deputies again for their contributions on this issue. Deputy Christopher O’Sullivan, who is a great advocate for climate action and renewable energy, pointed out that our ambition now is produce 8 GW of solar capacity. That is a very ambitious target but one we believe can be achieved. I very much agree with him that we must remove any obstacles that we can. Planning laws have been relaxed and TAMS and other grants are available, as the Deputy has said. I also know that people are running into practical obstacles and we need to remove any of those that we can. I also agree that farmers can lead the way on this, whether this is by solar panels on roofs or on fields which can still, of course, be grazed, and we will be encouraging farmers to do exactly that.
When it comes to electric vehicles, as mentioned by Deputy Bacik, we have seen an increase in the purchase and uptake of these vehicles in the past year, where, I believe, in the region of 20% of all new cars purchased were battery electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. That is in line with where we thought we would be around now and is a little encouraging. We have set aside €100 million over the next three years to provide more charging points because that infrastructure is necessary if we are to encourage more people to go electric.
I do not know the exact figures for Dublin but I will ask the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, to pass them on to the Deputy.
I do not want to comment on the Exxon story. I saw the reports on the news and do not know their veracity or what Exxon's reply or defence has been, if there have been any.
Deputy Paul Murphy is correct to say that emissions from electricity did go up. There are a number of reasons for that. We had to use coal again, something we had ceased doing. We also have increased demand for electricity. Data centres are part of that, but they are only one part.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-01-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-01-24