Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

I wish to share time with Deputies Finian McGrath and Ó Snodaigh.

I support the Kyoto Protocol and the flexible mechanisms contained within it. However, we must be careful and cautious about how we use these mechanisms. There is a concern that some of the clean development mechanisms could be used in a way that does not lead to real reduction; they must relate to reductions that otherwise would not have occurred. Of the several hundred such mechanisms that have been developed, only two relate to Africa. While that mechanism was supposed to help the poor, it is not doing so. Like some of the other joint implementation mechanisms, it is taking up the easy carbon reductions that occurred in the early 1990s when the economies collapsed in former Soviet-bloc countries. That is what we are doing. We are in a state of denial on climate change. This is the equivalent of a mid-morning shot of vodka for the Government to get us through the day.

I am concerned about these flexible mechanisms because they take time to get right. These are due to come into operation at the end of 2008, but we are only now starting to examine investment in projects that, because of their nature, take years to set up, monitor and process. We are coming to this incredibly late.

We must think beyond the Kyoto target of 2012. The Minister knows that the real debate is on what comes next. The European Union has said that it is to reduce emissions by 2020 by at least 15% below 1990 levels, and the Taoiseach has supported that. We know that our emissions in 2010 will be approximately 30% above the 1990 level. We are effectively seeking a 45% cut in ten years. It will be incredibly expensive for Ireland to buy its way out of this problem. It will not be the €500 million over three years that Deputy Gilmore talked about, it will be €500 million per year.

To meet our targets we must start changing now. Every single investment decision we make must be carbon proofed. Every road programme must be questioned and every energy policy must be changed. We must realise that turning this State around by 180 degrees in a new direction is the only way we will meet this challenge. The Government is being dishonest in that regard. It is dishonest when it lauds the supposed reduction in recent years from 27% to 23% as a real achievement. The Minister knows that only reason for this reduction was a statistical change in the base year and the closure of a number of factories, including IFI, Irish Steel and others. We must start by being honest about what is happening.

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