Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The national climate change strategy was published just over five years ago. At the beginning of the plain guide version, we are told that we face a grim future unless we change. The plain guide goes on to tell us that the national climate change strategy turns the Kyoto Agreement into a programme for action. I should mention that the national climate change strategy was published in 2000, three years after the Kyoto Agreement was signed.

In the five years since that programme for action was devised, what progress has been made? Ireland's carbon emissions are 25% up on the benchmark 1990 value. While our limit is an increase of 13% by 2012, we have doubled this in only five years.

With only six years to go before the Kyoto deadline of 2012, it appears unlikely that Ireland will reduce carbon emissions to our allowed limit. This means that Ireland will have to buy carbon — the Minister informed the House today that 8 million tonnes are required — or the right to pollute on the international market. In other words, the Government plans to buy its way with taxpayers' money out of its inaction on the environment.

While the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, admitted today that a further reduction of 8 million tonnes of carbon emissions will be required by 2012, he declined to state by how much carbon will be reduced each year. However under Article 3(4) of the Kyoto Protocol, this information should have been submitted prior to the Montreal meeting. Article 3(2) states: "each Party included in Annex I shall, by 2005, have made demonstrable progress in achieving its commitments under this Protocol". Article 3(4) states:

Prior to the first session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Protocol [in plain language, that means the Montreal meeting] each Party included in Annex I shall provide, for consideration by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, data to establish its level of carbon stocks in 1990 and to enable an estimate to be made of its changes in carbon stocks in subsequent years.

Hence, it is plain that we are required to submit a year by year reduction in our level of carbon admissions to the Montreal meeting. The Minister told us today that he is not obliged to do so.

He also declined to state what the worst case scenario would be if Ireland does not meet its targets. Surely at this late stage, when it is quite clear that the national climate change strategy is far behind in its implementation, the Minister should seek this type of information from his advisers. The cost has been estimated by the Government's consultants as being between €102 million and €120 million each year for the next five years in fines for our excess carbon dioxide emissions. That is a total of €600 million over five years.

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