Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

We need to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk. Cutting down is something we can do in fairly simple ways. When we leave Monaghan we have no other choice but to travel by car. The same is true of people travelling from Cavan and Donegal. People in most other counties have an opportunity to travel by train but we do not. When approaching Dublin, one meets the M50. If one has to go anywhere else but the city, one has to use that road. I do not understand why there is no provision of park and ride facilities to reduce the significant number of cars on the M50 whose engines are just ticking over and emitting great quantities of fumes. The majority of these cars could be parked at a facility adjacent to the M50 and buses could travel between there and the city using bus lanes and ensuring less congestion.

A train line is still in place from Dublin to Navan and Navan to Kingscourt. While a park and ride facility in Kingscourt may not be the location of choice for a rail link from Cavan or south Monaghan, it would be a step forward. The infrastructure is already in place and only needs to be restructured. One of my former colleagues investigated the possibility of creating a rail link from Monaghan town to Portadown to connect it with Dublin. These are the type of options we need to consider in light of what is required.

Fine Gael has no objection, in principle, to purchasing carbon allowances as part of our national climate change strategy. We recognise that taking a tonne of carbon out of the atmosphere has the same effect, irrespective of where it takes place, and that it can be more cost effective for rich countries to subsidise carbon reduction in developing countries than to achieve them domestically.

However, we oppose the Bill on the following grounds. The Bill comes in advance of the promised review of the national climate change strategy, which the Minister, Deputy Roche, announced last June, but over which he is obviously still dithering. No doubt, he is nervous of the electoral implications. We therefore have no idea of the likely balance between domestic actions and international carbon allowance purchases the Government is proposing.

It is important that domestic actions account for a much greater proportion of our climate change strategy than has been the case heretofore. Even putting aside the moral or ethical question of whether it is right to buy our way entirely out of our environmental obligations, there is a more practical concern. Early and excessive use of the carbon allowances and other "flexible mechanisms" is creating a fool's paradise by allowing us to delay the difficult policy decisions that inevitably lie ahead. We will not be able to afford to buy our way out of our obligations indefinitely.

Without publication of the climate change strategy review, it is impossible to have confidence in the Government. Although the first national climate change strategy was published in 2000, few of the concrete domestic measures it proposed have ever been adopted. Even tweaking vehicle registration tax, VRT, to reflect carbon dioxide emissions has been deferred until next January at the earliest — a full eight years later than originally proposed. This has no doubt prompted a surge in the sales of SUVs and other larger cars this year. One of the aspects of the budget that annoyed me most was the postponement of the introduction of such a measure until after the general election.

We have dithered for years over introducing higher energy efficiency standards for new homes, with the result that more than 200,000 were built to the old standards. I cannot help but think of Mr. McCaughey, the former owner of Century Homes who is now involved with Kingspan Century. He has preached on this issue on many occasions.

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