Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that.

Deputy Leddin floated a good idea, to which I had not given deeper consideration, that an office similar to the budgetary office in respect of climate could be established in the Parliament. That is not a bad idea in terms of resourcing the Parliament in general. The Oireachtas has to develop a more collective identity on climate change. We attempted to do this in the past. For example, the previous Dáil had an Oireachtas committee on the climate. It did not get unanimity on many issues, and the recent debates are showing that we still have some distance to go. The carbon tax is one issue and the turf issue is an illustration of that.

All the warnings are extremely grim; what is ahead of us is bad. The Cabinet committee was given a presentation during the week which was grimmer again, particularly for the children of our children regarding the world they are going to inherit if we do not do something fairly dramatic as a society to change how we behave. We cannot be saying the bigger countries must do it because every country must do it. There is potential in it economically for us with regard to jobs and so forth, but I am very worried that because it is still intangible and way in the distance for many people decisions will always be delayed. If we get into a state of high dudgeon over what we did two weeks ago, I really worry. We do not have the resources without some revenue streams. There are two reasons for the carbon tax. One is that it affects behaviour, and that is based on international research. Second, it gives us resources to carry out retrofitting and environmentally-friendly farming and to protect against fuel poverty. The money does not grow on trees, and we need resources to address climate change. We will need a consistent stream of revenue in some shape or form to address it.

That is just one aspect of it. There are many other aspects and there will be other challenges coming to the Oireachtas with the carbon budgets and carbon ceilings for each sector. This is going to be very challenging politically. I am not getting partisan on this, but it is going to be challenging all round. It is going to stretch all politicians as this becomes more manifest as we flow through the law.

On wind energy, we have the legislation passed. I am very taken with this. We have to get the wind energy right. It is interesting that many indigenous companies are emerging now in the wind energy area. I do not wish to be local about it but I attended the Cork Chamber of Commerce dinner last week and it was interesting that, for the first time, of the three companies that won awards two of them were in the offshore space. That is a sign, perhaps, that the enterprise base is responding.