Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

It is of fundamental importance. I do not believe we will have an opt-out in the same way as previously. I do not believe we will be able to go to the international community and ask it to excuse poor Ireland, since we are no longer poor. We are one of the world's worst polluters and have an even greater obligation to achieve the reductions of 3% per annum that I believe necessary. If we look beyond 2020, we will require reductions of 70% to 80%, meaning that even the 20% target is only the start.

Let us consider where we are going. Sustainable Energy Ireland produced an excellent document looking forward and plotting trends to 2020 under current Government policy. It will be relatively accurate, since the shifts are fairly long-term. Rather than a radical decrease, it predicts a further radical increase of 30% in our energy emissions. We must turn this country around on a dime in the same way the United States of America was turned around at the start of the Second World War.

Everything must change, but when I say we must review the roads programme and spend more on public transport, the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, questions how we might possibly discuss it. I ask how his party or its coalition partner can even mention climate change when they are unwilling to consider setting a course to address it. It would have positive effects for the country, since the current roads-based system is not working. However, on the individual moral tack alone, that level of new thinking is required if, in a decade, we are to play our part in preventing the planet tipping into irreversible long-term catastrophe.

I will return to Al Gore. Our job as leaders is not to scare people or make them feel guilty. We are far from paragons of virtue, and Al Gore may have been burning too much carbon in recent years. However, I forgive him, since he has done a very successful job highlighting the issue of where we go from here. None of us is perfect, but we are all faced with a moral choice, particularly political leaders, who must take this country in the right direction.

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