Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is attending the conference in Nairobi this week and will be articulating Ireland's position. Delegates will continue discussions on a possible agreement to succeed the one made at Kyoto and Ireland will play a full part in that. The key focus is on involving countries that do not currently have emission reduction commitments. While I am optimistic for progress in these discussions, agreement may not be reached at this meeting. We may have to discuss this again in the New Year.

While I did not read the entire Stern report, I read the executive summary and some other sections. His full findings on the economics of climate change will be presented at the conference later this week. We support the key message of his report that there are strong environmental and economic reasons for taking action now. The German NGO Watch published a report at the UN conference yesterday which ranked developed countries according to their progress in reducing greenhouse emissions. Ireland was ranked 33rd of 56, an improvement on last year's ranking of 39th. We have been proactive and successful in addressing national greenhouse gas emissions and we continue to be so. We have decoupled our economic growth from increases in emissions during the 15 year period between 1990 and 2004. During this time our emissions grew by 23% while our economy grew by 150%. We will reduce our emissions by 11 million tonnes per annum through measures already in place including 3 million tonnes from power plants and large industry through the EU emissions trading scheme. We are committed to and supportive of the EU emissions trading scheme. Over 100 Irish installations are participating in that. The strength of the economy is placing upward pressure on emissions and further measures will be put in place to address the situation. We intend to put in place further emissions, but that will be based not on my giving figures from the top of my head but on figures provided by competent people.

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