Mr. Gabriel D'Arcy:

The Deputy's first question was related to flexibility and certainty. There is certainly a leadership challenge to be met in a context where so many changes are taking place. Take energy, for instance, we saw what happened in the past two or three years in the shale revolution in the United States. There is significant ongoing technological development and we have seen a great deal of emerging information from eminent climatologists and so on. Our view is that there must be a global setting of targets and a tightening of existing structures, including a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol and so on. Recent announcements by President Obama and the Chinese Government have been helpful in this regard.

In terms of what Ireland should be doing, the type of vision we are proposing would include setting out a view of where we see ourselves up to 2050. The NESC report suggested attaining carbon neutral status by 2050 could be a target for us. If that is to be achieved, we must set out what has to be done by 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050 and begin laying out guidelines to that end. Of course, while all of this is going on, we have the normal cycle of economic life. We are in a difficult economic period and that must be taken into account. It is crucial to retain some level of flexibility to accommodate normal economic cycles. It will inevitably happen that particular goals will not be reached because something else has arisen which the Government of the day must take into account. There must be a mechanism for retaining a certain flexibility, but, at the same time, we need to have a degree of certainty in terms of where we are going, how policy is being developed and the framework within which targets will be achieved. There must be a clear plan in terms of how objectives in this regard will cascade into all areas of Irish life, whether it be planning, particularly spatial planning, food and agriculture and so on. Objectives have already been set in some of these areas up to 2020, but we must plan for how we can build on this in a sustainable manner. There is a massive opportunity in the energy area, for example, and that is all linked into resources, including water and wind energy. This could all be encapsulated within a vision up to 2050, which would include a plan for how objectives could be brought forward and cascaded into all relevant areas.

At the same time, I am not a great believer in having specific targets. As an open economy on the western fringes of Europe, we should be careful about taking unilateral actions and must always give consideration to the global and regional consequences. Europe, I am pleased to say, is further ahead than most regions in the world in this domain. There is a real opportunity for Ireland to be a leader within Europe on these issues, simply because of the disproportionate strengths we enjoy in terms of our renewable resources, if they are properly mobilised.

My colleague, Mr. Curtin, might comment on the experience of companies such as Vodafone, for example, which operate in other countries in terms of the climate change targets and legislative provisions that pertain there.