Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Green Party)

I am sorry that I cannot do so. The hot air from this side of the House is certainly circulating around the Chamber and not doing the country's future any good.

I will talk about transport because the transport sector, at 31%, accounts for the largest share of energy consumption and also contributes to emissions, global warming, acid rain and respiratory diseases, thus putting pressure on our health care service. It contributes to almost 20% of carbon dioxide emissions and at the very least contributes to climate change, rising sea levels and increased flooding in Ireland. At EU level, through the Kyoto Protocol, we must meet our climate change targets. Adopting the Green Party Bill will ensure that this happens.

We need to start giving people real transport choices. We spend four times as much on roads as we do on public transport and this trend needs to be reversed. In my constituency, for example, people working outside the city centre in areas such as Clondalkin and Lucan have no choice but to drive to work, thus contributing to global warming. We need real solutions involving real bus and rail investment rather than the fantasy lines on a map that are evident in the Government's Transport 21 proposals.

In providing public transport solutions, we need to consider providing our energy locally in so far as is possible. The Government's spending four times more on roads than on public transport has resulted in circumstances in which 90% of our energy needs are derived from imported fossil fuels. We are wholly unprepared for the imminent peak in global oil production, which other Deputies have mentioned, and the commitments the international community has made on climate change. Both of these global issues will require us to scale back our use of oil and its derivatives by almost 2% in each of the next 40 years. We must start living more sustainably.

With oil production peaking and the attendant price hikes and shortages that are inevitable, the only way to provide a clean and secure transport solution for both urban and rural areas is to invest in transport run on locally grown fuels. That will provide jobs. Our oil should be coming from Carlow and Kilkenny, as Councillor Mary White has said, not from Kuwait. We can provide jobs and steady farm incomes in this way.

I listened to and watched the debate on the monitor. Speaking from the Government benches, as I am at present, I feel like a Luddite. The Government has displayed a Luddite mentality by bringing up the old chestnuts about farming jobs and industry being destroyed. By what would they be destroyed? They will be destroyed by not responding early to the coming energy crisis. Those who do not respond early are betraying farming communities and their constituents. They are removing future jobs and making it more difficult to adapt to the lower energy consumption future to which we all must adapt.

There is no point saying it will be too difficult and will have this and that effect. As Deputy Murphy and my party colleagues have said, jobs have been created by multinational companies being energy efficient. That is the way of the future. We must provide incentives. During this debate Members on the Government benches have shown they are nothing but opportunistic, political parasites——

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