Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

Regarding the President's remarks, unfortunately my two meetings with him were concluded before I was made aware of the remarks. As I stated at the time, I would not in any way agree with those remarks. In fairness to him, I subsequently read the full text of what he said and in spite of some of the things he said, he said he did understand the rights of the gay community. He said both things on that particular occasion. I do not agree with the comments he made.

What happened in the Council is that there would not have been agreement on the package if it was to be legally binding across each individual country. We would support that but the agreement was that it would be legally binding on the community as a whole to collectively achieve that figure. This was based on the understanding that a number of countries — at least six and it may be more — stated they would not achieve that target under any circumstances and, therefore, would not agree that it should be collectively and individually binding. They said it was just not possible for them to do that.

I believe the target is achievable. Based on the evidence in this country, wind and wave power are very good technologies. Some good commercial companies are involved in wave power, some of which are based off the Scottish coast, but some companies based here are in a position to develop the technology after 20 years of effort in this area and that can significantly improve the renewables industry. Many other initiatives are spelled out in the Green Paper on Energy and in our climate strategy which will be published shortly.

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