Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

There is a plan across Departments, including mine, to help reduce carbon emissions. It covers a range of areas. I will return to the matter of travel in a minute, but the plan deals particularly with recycling, reusing and how we handle old machines, such as computers, copiers and so on. There is a rigorous plan to comply with the needs. It comes down to the lights policy, namely, turning out lights. It is a detailed plan and is being monitored.

Following the plan is a bit easier in my Department because there are people in the building 24 hours a day, including military police. It is easy to keep everything in line. There is a procurement plan regarding purchases that take account of environmental needs. There are plans to do even more and the Department would admit that we could do new things, ranging from brown bins to using some parts of old computers. A big effort is being made.

On transport, the Department is trying to do more work regarding conference meetings to cut down on the level of travel. To be frank, this has as much to do with the efficiency of the Department as it does with the carbon footprint, but there are more and more conference meetings. For example, the touring Presidency is fast dying as a practice. We are in March and I have not seen my German colleagues, but I have heard them. The Deputy knows how the situation would have been in the past. A big effort is being made.

In terms of the value for money of transport, we do not have as many Brussels-based meetings, which are mainly attended by my officials. A lot can be done via conference sessions to reduce the amount of committee meetings being held in Brussels. The Irish Presidency's dramatic reduction in the number of meetings is holding well. We do not need 200 people or 300 people to attend the meetings. If everyone limited it to 15 people or 20 people for the bigger countries, we could cut down on a lot of travel. There are practical things that can be done. We have a small team, but some countries' teams are of ridiculous sizes.

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