Mr. Patrick Swords:

What is the rush? As I stated, the planet has not increased in temperature in the past 16 years. I spent ten years going over and back to Eastern Europe. I sat for many months at the end of Bulevardul Unirii in Bucharest in the ministry of the environment looking at Ceausescu's palace. Something I learned there is the environment does not belong to the state but to the people. The people must be given robust procedural rights. As Deputy Coffey rightly pointed out, adopting climate change targets has a huge impact on agriculture and other issues.

People do not know this. They have not been informed. One of the issues is that such a programme is required to have a regulatory impact assessment with a cost-benefit analysis, but when I request the cost-benefit analysis it does not exist. If we examine the Climate Change Act which the last Government brought through, the regulatory impact assessment was less than four pages and the cost-benefit had words such as "improved feeling of well-being" and "better quality of life". We need to get this right before we rush into massive infrastructural developments.

Since 1999, power stations in Ireland have been upgraded. I have been involved with it. Our modern generation fleet of thermal plants is one of the best in Europe. We could keep operating our system for a number of years without any additional investment. I do not have to prove a negative. The Government has to prove a positive. What is this renewable development doing? We do not know.