Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

No. It was set down clearly on the Order of Business. I will speak first followed by Deputies Crowe and Joe Higgins.

Tááthas orm deis a fháil labhairt tar éis na cáinfhaisnéise mar tá go leor ann ar cheart dúinn a phlé. Tosóidh mé le ráiteas an Aire é féin. The Minister spoke yesterday about economic sustainability and the quality of spending. If we are to develop an economy and a society on a sustainable basis, the Government must invest in alleviating poverty and in the development of indigenous renewable energy. Instead, the Government has decided to kick off its election campaign and has paved the way to send money out of our economy using a carbon fund. Let us imagine that the Minister for Finance stood up yesterday, telling us that he had a great scheme to advance the cause of road safety. Instead of providing resources for more road checks, random breath testing, more ambulances and so on, he would instead pay for the funerals of those that were going to die on the roads. That is the analogy which parallels the carbon fund. It is not a response to the growing problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

It seems the Government is finally beginning to accept that the economy is facing a serious energy crisis in the medium term. Evidence of this has been available for years. The Government has reacted because of the impending election and the increase in oil prices we have experienced this year. It is also reacting to the worldwide evidence that climate change is kicking in. We do not have to go to New Orleans to see the effects of climate change. We only have to look at the frequency and intensity of rainfall. In the 1960s, 7% of rainfall was classed as heavy, but in the 1990s, 15% of rainfall was classed as heavy. It is no wonder that we have flooding problems and it is no wonder that the Taoiseach was famously pictured in his wellingtons in Drumcondra. It will not be the last time that such a scenario will occur.

However, the excise relief on biofuels and capital grants announced yesterday still fail to acknowledge the massive potential in the renewables sector for creating employment, developing indigenous enterprise, creating markets for Irish agricultural produce and providing security of energy supply to this economy. The Government's measures are conservative, long overdue, and leave us lagging behind other countries. The potential of the renewables sector represents an enormous opportunity. The Government's biofuels target of 2% by 2008 is extremely conservative and even brazen, as it effectively states that we will break the EU requirement that the target be reached by 2005. Moreover, it seems to be an admission that we will not meet our EU target of 5.75% of biofuels for transport by 2010, just as we have missed the 2% target in 2005.

The Minister's announcement of €65 million for a renewable energy grant scheme for the period 2006-10 is very small beer given the potential for saving energy in this way. With 75,000 new homes being built every year, an allocation of €13 million per year only amounts to €175 per house. That does not allow for any allocation to existing housing stock. This is not a serious commitment. In the UK, significant grants have been available to householders for such works for many years. We have to go further and I repeat my call for grants of between 30% and 50% for solar, geothermal and woodchip heating systems. There are grants available north of the Border for photovoltaic installation in public and private buildings. I was in a church that was able to derive an income from the energy being created by the photovoltaic cells on its roof. The Government's measures betray the consistent and regrettable lack of vision and ambition that seems to have prevailed in this policy area.

The energy performance of buildings directive is legislation that has been questioned by many of us on this side of the House over several months. It will take effect across the EU on 4 January 2006. It is an elementary step in increasing energy efficiency and, amongst other things, will provide house buyers and tenants with information on their potential home. However, it will not come into force in Ireland, because this Government has arranged a three-year derogation. This derogation is ostensibly a result of the Government's lack of technical ability to implement the directive. However, that is an attempt to protect friends who will fund the respective election campaigns of the Government parties. If that is the case, then I compliment the Government on its consistency. This "friends first" approach to policy is consistent with the effective extension of many of the property and area-based tax reliefs, as well as the stallion relief which is being retained until after the next election. The Government's corporate backers will smile this Christmas.

However, I warn the Minster for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government that he has no right to complain about the EU's assessment of Ireland's environmental record if this represents the approach he is taking. The carbon fund is essentially a mechanism put in place so that the Government can avoid its international obligations under the Kyoto protocol and send hundreds of millions of euro out of our economy between 2008 and 2012. A carbon levy, laid out in our national climate change strategy and supported by the Combat Poverty Agency, the EPA and senior advisers in the ESRI, would keep the money in the Irish economy. In turn, the money should be used to reduce PRSI for employees and employers, reduce VAT and increase social welfare payments. The carbon fund is consistent with the Government's approach to this issue. It is happy to have the taxpayer pay for the effects of its failures rather than addressing the causes. As I mentioned earlier, this is like paying for the patient's funeral rather than paying for the treatment.

Yesterday, the Minister for Finance waxed lyrical about the quality of spending. I will not try to point out the contradictions between this philosophy and between the Government's practice in transport, health and energy, as they are too obvious to require comment. However, I will ask a question. Has the Minister applied this philosophy of quality spending to tax expenditure? Although he has undertaken some piecemeal reform of the system of tax relief in this budget, he has not put in place a transparent and rational system whereby he will be in a position to answer the following questions this time next year on tax expenditure. What is the social, economic or environmental purpose of the tax relief? How many people and which incomes are benefitting from the relief? What benefits are accruing to Irish society from the relief? How much tax is being foregone? Are these costs justified? These are the questions that come about from a cost benefit analysis, which we are entitled to have. Lobbying for tax reliefs will continue in the infamous tent at the Galway races. The Government's decision on tax reliefs will continue to be led by its "friends first" philosophy. The quality of expenditure comes a distant second.

In 2003, we were given a decentralisation budget. Decentralisation is now a mess. In 2004, we were given a disability budget. In the meantime, the Government has forced through a deeply flawed disability Act. Now that the Act is in force, there was no mention of disability in this year's budget speech. That is somewhat surprising, given that the Irish Wheelchair Association and others have been lobbying hard for core funding to mainstream many of the services provided by community employment schemes. It would have cost about €11.5 million to provide that core funding. It would have been well within the tax take of €100 million from VAT on increased fuel charges and would also have paid for a doubling of the fuel allowance. While a great deal of money was spent, it was nothing like as much as was taken in. It was a mean gesture by the Government.

We have been disappointed again by the provisions for children and carers, which is something which will rebound on the Government when election time comes. While I acknowledge that the Government has at least modified its narrow, child benefit based approach to children, it is failing to target those in need. It has failed on a number of fronts. Barnardos and other groups have rightly pointed out that in the context of current child care costs, the under-sixes payment is a drop in the ocean. Budget measures do little for stay at home parents and fail utterly to deal with the need for a free year of pre-school places. Most significant, perhaps, is that they fail to deliver on a policy of ending child poverty.

The Government must be reminded of some basic facts. It has failed once again to target poverty despite the recommendations of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Barnardos and, it seems, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs. Since taking office at the Department of Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Brennan has paid constant lip service to the concept of ending child poverty, but the budget makes his talk seem hollow. It must be embarrassing for the Minister who must ask how he will face those to whom he has promised targeted, anti-poverty payments. Wealthy parents will receive the same payments as those living in poverty which is money which could have been targeted more effectively if the Government was serious. In this respect, I am obliged to mention the three words "child dependant allowance" which the Government has tried to ignore for the past eight years. The allowance has fallen by one third in real terms in three years despite the fact that it is supposed to be the mechanism to target child poverty. Why has the Government failed on this front?

Deputy Rabbitte mentioned the formative period during which Dr. Ken Whitaker strongly advised in the Department of Finance a radical shift in the economic paradigm of the late 1950s. In 2005 we face a very significant crossroads which is signalled internationally by the rising cost of energy. Unless Ireland embraces the zero-emissions unit of wealth, we will find that our country will slip further and further behind in its competitiveness. In the North I see small scale grid connections and hear from Denmark of targets of 50% wind energy generation by 2030 while we continue to be so oil dependent in the Republic that we make the United States of America look good. Ireland is the seventh most oil dependent nation in the world while the United States of America is ninth. Talk of economic competitiveness and wealth creation is hollow as long as the Government promotes a gluttonous, energy hungry country. We must make the paradigm shift necessary to build a lean, green and fair society.

See this speech in context