Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Independent)

I support the Bill not as a major contribution to the issues of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, bio-fuels and other alternative energies, but as a small start in this area. The background to today's debate was set only last week in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC. There is no dispute regarding this report's conclusion that the global environment is in serious danger.

The distillation of the scientific knowledge and logic of the world's leading researchers on climate change makes truly shocking reading. They predict, for example, temperature increases of between 1.1° Celsius and 4° Celsius by the end of the century and corresponding increases in sea levels from 28 cm to 43 cm. The report forecasts the disappearance of the Arctic Sea ice during summer and increasing numbers of heat waves and more intense tropical storms. It states that the effect of all these changes will be poverty, starvation, pollution and death. Most worrying of all, the report states it is not possible to stop or prevent this development; we can only seek to stem the scale of it.

This problem must be tackled strongly and urgently. A great opportunity was missed for farmers to use the closures of the Mallow and Carlow sugar plants for the growing of bio-fuels. I support the Bill.

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