Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is much cheaper to stage them in Dublin Castle where the interpreting and other facilities required are in place. Those would have to be moved to Tipperary or Kilkenny for that matter.

In reply to Deputy Noel Coonan, we are very conscious of the debate on the interaction between food security and the climate change agenda generally. There can be a conflict between the production of more food under Food Harvest 2020 and the impact of that on greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.

If we are not able to produce it here, Europe will have to find the food from Argentina and Brazil and other countries, which will have a bigger impact on the global emissions targets that we hope to have made legally binding by 2015. We can assure the committee that we are very conscious of that debate and will be playing our part to ensure that economic and environmental interests are inter-related and interlinked. We have to be able to consider these issues in the global context and not just as one island nation that has many advantages for meeting food requirements for mainland Europe.

Science is showing very significantly that if we do not take action quickly in the next couple of years, in the European Union or worldwide, that there will be a considerable increase in temperatures which will have a serious impact on many of the least developed countries. Ireland cannot be excluded from that. Cities such as Cork and Dublin will daily experience changes and we must plan for the works to adapt to those changes. If the sea level rises it will have an impact on many of the communities in our island nation. We must plan on behalf of those communities. A low carbon economy is a competitive one and that is a good way to go from an Irish point of view. As part of our Presidency we are emphasising the opportunities that will arise from rolling out a green economy, exploiting the potential of the resources we have, whether in waste or water. We have tremendous natural advantages from which we can create employment opportunities for many companies. There is considerable interest now in sustainable means of food production and processing to capture the markets in China and beyond.

These countries are becoming more and more conscious that if they want to deal with issues of social and political unrest they must also deal with environmental issues. There is massive investment in China in bringing water from the south to the north to allay the concerns of 650 million Chinese people. This major investment has a political dimension as well as an environmental one. Politics, the economy and the environment are increasingly interlinked in the climate change agenda. Ireland has a very proud record, through the overseas development aid distributed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, of linking with these issues, particularly in Africa and in the Far East. The member states of conferences such as Doha display a great sense of the rich resource that we have made available through the contacts established by missionaries and the work of many of our NGOs as part of our overseas development aid package. Hopefully that will continue through the green climate fund. Irish people are seen as leaders in that area and as having a respect for the difficulties of people in less developed areas. This climate change agenda is significant and should be seen as positive because it offers many job creation opportunities not just for the Irish abroad but domestically. We should exploit these and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, recently published a document on the green economy which points the way for many initiatives that could be taken to create jobs for people through this resource efficiency green economy agenda. This will be part of what we will say at our informal council meeting in Dublin Castle next April when we will highlight those opportunities not just for Ireland but for the European Union.