Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

That is what Stern says it will be. I am not deciding this, and neither is the Minister. I want him to bear in mind that he may be coming at this from a completely different viewpoint from the reality. We need targets and that is something the Minister failed to accept from the Green Party when it put forward its climate change targets Bill 2005, the first legislation in this regard. That would have meant that year by year we would commit ourselves to reductions, which would give a clear signal to business in particular as well as to every citizen to recognise that graduated reductions would be made each year. Our reductions need to be well below what the Minister or even the European Union is considering, and that is coming from the Stern report as well.

The message to business is very mixed, when the Minister talks about €270 million for a carbon fund and just €14 million for bioenergy growers. A clear lack of priority is attached to measures in this country that would save us from having to pay for a carbon fund. This is part of a much larger picture. Reference was made to the Arctic and melting ice caps, but this is also an enormous opportunity. The imagination, as well as the planning needed for this just seems to have passed the Minister by. We are talking about rising sea levels, melting ice caps and enormous refugee problems which the United Nations High Commission on Refugees has not even begun to acknowledge — because this is an environmental issue and it only deals with political refugees. A major blindspot exists regarding the impact on Ireland, which I believe will relate primarily to refugees, first and foremost, before we feel the impact of rising seas. That is something which I believe this Government has not even countenanced.

The Stern report understood competitiveness. Even though the Minister says he wants to keep business competitive, he is genuinely missing the point as to how to do this in a climate of a low carbon economy. In many cases this is not the companies that are feeding the Fianna Fáil Party as well as the Celtic tiger, such as the large construction firms that manage to get away with low insulation norms and high energy use as a legacy from their work. It is the companies that are striving to set up off-shore wind farms and to develop geothermal and solar power and other aspects of the 21 renewable technologies. At the same time they are being faced with quite a number of cowboys in the sector because the Government has not introduced an adequate regulatory framework to require registration of trained people and provide the training required. I have experienced this myself as I had solar panels installed that were put in incorrectly. I must spend more money to rectify it because people are allowed to get insurance and simply carry on. While they pretend to be experts, one finds out in the long run. Of course such operators claim that one will recoup one's money in ten to 15 years, by which time they have fled. This is a perfect recipe for a cowboy operator. The Minister has a responsibility to clamp down in this regard, in order that the basic renewable technology sector does not find itself dragged down by people with low standards. Regrettably, this is happening at present. The Minister should deal with it.

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