Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

I will reply on the practical questions raised. There are two aspects to the issue of China. It is still building coal fired power stations, only it is doing so less fast than it was. It is also now the largest investor in renewables in the world. It is taking pollution very seriously because it is seeing the local impact of local air pollution. The biggest difference between Copenhagen in 2009 and Paris this year is that there have been two big deals in the past year between President Obama and President Xi Jinping in advance of this conference. The two biggest polluters in the world are showing some degree of leadership on it. China is taking action and has committed to peak and reduce its emissions towards 2030. China has been used as an excuse in the US and was raised in the media here as well. People asked what the point was if China was not moving, but China is moving.

Indeed, one of the things it is doing is capturing much of the business opportunity. Germany is moving away from nuclear power and into renewables in a big way. It thought it would build the solar panels but it was out-competed by the Chinese. The Germans own much of the renewable energy; local people own 51% of it, not big companies. However, it is mainly Chinese solar panels. The investment by German taxpayers in subsidised solar energy has driven change in both Germany and China. We must also acknowledge that much of the Chinese manufacturing is for our consumption. One can no longer cite China as a reason for the other countries not acting.

With regard to 4.5 million people, nobody is asking Ireland to do more than its fair share. We are the fourth highest per capitain the EU, so that is another way of looking at our peer groups.

There was a question about whether we can get off fossil fuels by 2050 and how we cope with the power of the industry. Countries such as Sweden, Finland and Denmark have set that fossil free target for themselves for 2050. It is possible and there are models for how it can be done and what it involves. The technology is evolving. A solar panel in Ireland will get 80% of the impact of a solar panel in Madrid because of our long daylight hours. However, there is no payment for having one for electricity generation. That is one change we must see here. Solar has potential, as does anaerobic digestion. Obviously, wave and tidal power have possibilities. The biggest, easiest win is in retrofitting our homes and reducing our need for heating in our homes. Down the line there are electric vehicles combined with storing the renewable power that is generated. Almost all of the reductions we need can be done with existing technology. It is a question of deployment and change, and not getting locked into new investments in fossil intensive power.

On the power of the fossil fuel industry, there are some changes. Rather than campaigners focusing mainly on the high level issues, as we are here today and will be in Paris, or even the semi-abstract content of a climate Bill, more public attention and focus is going on fossil fuel infrastructure. President Obama made a big decision a couple of weeks ago not to build the Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands in Canada, the most polluting source of oil, for the oil to be refined in the US. He did not think it was economically useful, given how things are going, or climate appropriate. It is the first time a country has rejected major infrastructure because of its impact on climate change. That is leadership from the US, but we must see it more generally. Ireland will face decisions about peat, Moneypoint and fracking in the future. Do we go down the energy efficiency and renewables path or the fossil path? It is the choices we make. It will not be one big thing, just many choices.

There was a question about taking the CO2 out of coal. There is a lot of talk, particularly from the coal-producing states in the US, about clean coal and the potential of carbon capture and storage, CCS. That process involves putting something at the end of the tailpipe, sucking out the CO2 and storing it underground, often in old gas fields. It is potentially possible and there is no harm in researching it, but there is no sign of it happening as yet. The UK has given particular concessions to gas-fired power stations that were CCS-ready, which meant, in the case of Drax or one of the other large stations, having an empty space on the site so that when the technology came along, there would be somewhere to put it. Beyond that, however, we are not very close to progress in this area. We certainly cannot use the potential of CCS as a reason not to act. We must act now, and perhaps in 2030 or 2040, or whenever CCS comes on stream, we can make use of it.