Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I move amendment No. a1:

In page 4, line 4, after "acquiring" to insert the following:

"(up to a maximum of 3.6 million Kyoto units by 2012)".

The Bill as presented enables the Minister through the National Treasury Management Agency to buy carbon allowances, which will be known as Kyoto units in order to meet our Kyoto commitments. The Minister is proposing that he be given an open-ended mandate by the Oireachtas to buy as much carbon as he wants. On Committee Stage he seemed to indicate his intention to authorise the purchase of carbon even beyond what might be needed to meet our Kyoto commitments and to bank it against future pollution.

The Government seems to be taking a "pollute now, pay later" approach to our Kyoto commitments given that we are way over our Kyoto limit — we are now 25% or 26% above the 1990 levels and are required to be at 13%. We are approximately 15 million tonnes wide of the mark. The Minister believes that approximately 7 million tonnes or 8 million tonnes can be achieved in emissions trading. He expects he will need to purchase approximately 3.6 million tonnes. He was so confident that the carbon reduction measures he intends to embark upon — I have not seen much evidence of them to date — would reduce our carbon emissions that 3.6 million tonnes would be the upper limit of what we would need to purchase. If that is the case, it should be specified in the Bill.

The Minister wants a mandate from the House not only to purchase carbon on an open-ended basis in respect of the existing Kyoto Agreement, he also wants to be given the power to purchase carbon for any future agreements entered into. Of course we know that the European Union has already decided it will require a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Given that the Minister is presiding over a regime with a 25% or 26% increase over 1990, a 20% reduction by 2020 will be a very tall order. Even if we get as generous a deal under the burden-sharing arrangement as we got in 1997, the Minister's own estimate is that it would require us to reach the 1990 levels by 2020 which would require a reduction of 25% or 26% on our existing emissions. That is a very tall order and the Minister wants the permission of the House to buy carbon to meet that requirement.

He is really saying that the Government has no intention of reducing emissions to the levels required under the Kyoto Agreement and the commitments we have entered into through the European Union, and that we will buy our way out of it. On the other hand he is telling us that 3.6 million tonnes will be the upper limit. He cannot have it both ways. He wants the Bill to allow him to buy carbon for existing and future agreements. When he was challenged on the matter on Committee Stage he claimed that 3.6 million tonnes would be the upper limit. Let us put it to the test. The Minister is either confident that we will get the reductions he claims will be achieved in which case he will have no difficulty in agreeing to placing the 3.6 million tonne limit in the Bill, or he is tacitly admitting that the reduction measures he has advocated will not be met.

Amendment No. a1 would cap the amount of carbon that can be purchased and for which the carbon fund can be used at 3.6 million tonnes. Amendment No. 1 proposes to delete the proposition that the Bill shall also cover future agreements. By all means let it cover the existing Kyoto Agreement, but it is not appropriate to ask that it cover future agreements, the contents of which we do not yet know. We know that the European Union will attempt to achieve a 20% reduction by 2020, but we do not know how that translates into Ireland's requirements. The Minister is asking us to sign a blank cheque. As I said on Committee Stage, I know that some members of the Government have a fondness for blank cheques. Whatever place they may have in the financing of the Minister's party, they should not be used to run the finances of the country. I ask the Minister to accept the amendments to cap the figure at 3.6 million tonnes, which was the figure he stated would be the upper limit. If it is the upper limit then he should insert it in the Bill.

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