New gov scrappage grant of 8500

Not sure I follow this train of thought: As in 2023 both Germany and France are doing just fine and surpassed their target in that year. And Ireland by a large margin and Italy in lesser extent didn't. So we should just have the worst performing large countries as the target and continue on the path for slightly lesser fines for breaching the targets? Italy didn't meet their goal so we don't need to either because they are a larger country?

Yet most of the countries seem to have succeeded reducing their CO2 intensitivity just fine.

All of this is largely irrelevant. It still doesn't mean Ireland should be one of the worst performing countries when almost everybody else are reducing their reliance on the fossil fuels.

Its not remotely irrelevant. It means policy makers in Ireland shouldn't introduce overly punitive measures, that reduce the quality of lives of Irish people, in an effort to desperately chase a goal before a deadline that will almost certainly be reduced/delayed at EU level anyway.

EV car scrappage grants are actually a very positive example of the things we should be doing - they cost little, they improve people's quality of life, and they reduce emissions. But more punitive measures like consistent carbon tax increases on things like home heating oil are the opposite.

https://reportnet.europa.eu/public/dataflow/1478

The targets were easily obtainable if the stick was big and hard enough. Unfortunately there was no stick at all in Ireland because the relevant politicians didn't have big enough balls. Which was disappointing. Meehawl Martin had big balls when he forced through the smoking ban decades ago. First one in the world. This time Ireland is the dirty old man of Europe when it comes to emissions. The country of luddites and laggards…

Not too late. The $15 billion Apple stole from the Irish tax payer and we eventually got back is plenty to give this country a huge jump forward in renewables to bring it back to the top of the league where we were 100 years ago. Not a joke and not too many people realise it, but at the start of the national grid in Ireland, it was 100% renewable…

Ardnacrusha is a brillant story, everyone should look into that. I finally went to see it last summer

And as for those turbines - far cheaper than you think they are and the newest ones are 22-24MW each, with 50% power factor on the west coast. So just about 300 of them or so produce more electricity per year than Ireland currently uses

So you're saying my figures are out of date and more in-date figures are more impressive? Ardnacrusha was a huge undertaking at the time, I think it was 25% of the budget that year for what was a relatively new state to undertake

Moving back to renewables was meant to be a stated aim of the green party when they came to power in 2020 but they decided against it. Not sure if it was Eamon Ryan's inability to stay awake or the big ministerial pensions that moved them away from their election promises. Most notably while the greens were in power the EV and solar grants were dropped and we saw a resurgence in petrol and diesel cars

A car free world is a lovely idea to be fair, but it just doesn't work in todays economy, maybe if we went back to the 1800s before personal mobility and showing up to work on-time was a thing. We had a very strong state subsidy for EVs and none for ICE, meaning when you reduce the subsidy people will start showing more interest in its combustion engine competitor.

The greens couldn't see the error in their ways while it was happening, and being reported on, right in front of them

Not many people would say a gas that causes 30% of our global warming and takes 12 years to break down would be classed as "short lived" or "over stayed"

With that being said food security is quite important so we can't cull the national herd too much either. Everything has to be balanced.

Moving away from diesel/petrol and replacing ICE fuels with a viable alternative without any major side effects should be considered an easy win

New scheme doesn't start until next month, so will need to see some results first i'd suggest.

What has food security got to do with the national herd?

Do I need to explain to you where meat comes from?

all he owns are carcasses not herds!