Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

I welcome Deputy Gilmore's amendments. We need a Bill that is radically different from what the Minister is proposing which is that taxpayers foot the bill for Government ineptitude. Not only that but the taxpayers' children and their children's children will have to pick up the tab for climate change. Now is the time for action not words. As the media rightly pointed out during the past week the Minister has talked the talk for ten years on climate change. By his actions we shall know him and his Government colleagues. He has failed dramatically to tackle climate change. He is still building roads as if the oil will last forever. He is still adapting a laissez-faire approach to planning as if climate change is not happening. He is failing to tackle not only the environmental aspects of climate change but the economic aspects.

Year on year for the next five or six years he is asking taxpayers to foot the bill, €50 million or €60 million next year and every year up to 2012 and God knows what will happen thereafter. It is immoral and fiscally imprudent to proceed with such action. If it was a blip well and good. If it was a short-term strategy to get us out of a hole on our way to a low carbon future that would be justifiable but it is not a blip. The Minister's figures show €50 million to €55 million for the years 2008 to 2012, inclusive, the whopping sum of €270 million of the plain people of Ireland's money -taxpayers' money — being spun out of Ireland to pay our way out of climate change obligations. There is a better way. The Minister knows that so much of what we can do about climate change is within his remit, in transportation, building standards, planning policy and clear actions that his Department can take. His climate change strategy is four years' out of date at this stage and, no doubt, he will cobble something together for the Ard-Fheis or perhaps a week afterwards. It is too late to cobble things together. It is too late to pretend he can come back like Neville Chamberlain and produce action in our time.

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