Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

I wish to talk about solemn commitments, climate change and fairness. Since the foundation of this State, Ireland has had an excellent reputation in assisting developing regions of the world. In the fields of education and health care, the Irish, initially through the religious orders and in more recent times through the aid agencies, have earned an enviable reputation in assisting the less well-off of the world. That reputation is in danger of being squandered. In a time of unprecedented economic prosperity, it is shameful that reputation is being tarnished.

It was tarnished by our Taoiseach reneging on the solemn commitment he made on 3 September 2002 when he stated that the decline in overseas development aid in the 1990s was shameful, indefensible and inconsistent with the commitments given at Rio. The Taoiseach reiterated Ireland's absolute commitment to achieving by 2007 the UN target of spending 0.7% of GNP on overseas development assistance. That is what the Taoiseach said but it will not be delivered. That has damaged Ireland's reputation in the United Nations, with developing countries and in the international diplomatic sphere. It is not good enough to renege on that commitment.

In terms of climate change, Ireland did well under Kyoto and was given very generous allowances. However, it will still be an uphill struggle to achieve them. We were allowed a 13% increase from 1990 until the 2008 to 2012 period. We are already double the increase we were given and it will be very difficult to achieve the original target within the period. We are close to the bottom of the league in terms of distance from targets.

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, and the Minister for Transport, Deputy Cullen, must switch tack but that is a good news story because it will mean improvements in the quality of life, better bus services, towns and cities designed around people rather than cars, rural bus services, better long distance rail services, a shift in energy policy to wind turbines, tidal turbines, biomass and away from sugar into ethanol. I am not convinced the Government is making that switch and that its heart is in it. There must be a significant change in that regard.

It will be difficult and expensive to buy our way out of climate change but it will not be a matter of life and death. For people in developing countries, climate change is already a matter of life and death. In those countries, famine, disease and poverty, in many instances caused by climate change, are already killing people. Subsistence farmers cannot wait for the rain to come the next year and, as a result, they die. The richest countries in the world are causing climate change. We are causing it — the G8 and those countries that have wealth. From a moral perspective, it is crucial that Ireland plays its part and that we assist those countries to the best of our ability. It is not good enough to talk about what will be chopped in Ireland in order for us to fulfil our commitment. It is imperative for the Minister of State to make the commitment to increasing our development aid. Tens of thousands of children are dying every day in the developing world because he has not made that commitment.

The European Commission has already made strong commitments on climate change. It has made a commitment of 15-30% reductions by 2020 and 50-80% reductions by 2050. It is crazy that Ministers here are continuing as if nothing will ever change. It is crucial that Ireland plays its part and it is about fairness, about contraction and convergence. It is about ensuring that people in developing countries are given the same kind of allowances we will be given. We must ratchet down emissions. If it does not happen on the Minister of State's watch, it will be much more difficult to have reductions in climate change in the future. We must make that commitment and it is not good enough to water down our motion. It is not good enough to avoid the science and to avoid the facts.

Climate change is a science and the Minister of State must give a commitment that he will make those changes. We must look at what increase in global temperatures is acceptable and we must deal with that. We must set a target and work backwards from that. Ireland does not even have an up to date climate change strategy. It is years out of date and we have not seen any commitment to revising that within an appropriate timescale. I want the Minister of State to make a commitment to achieve what we have put down in our motion. I do not want him to do it in a wishy-washy Fianna Fáil way, but in a scientific way with a commitment that our Taoiseach gave three years ago. I think that is fair, it is equitable and it should be delivered.

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