Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

That is exactly my point. However, and this was clear to me from my short time in Government, unless we have structural cohesion, no matter how much talk there is, nothing will happen. We need a clear structure in place where there is agreement and cohesion and where people will take responsibility. This does not seem to be happening. Despite the fact transport is such a creator of carbon emissions, there seems to be no direct linkage between that Department and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

Perhaps this sounds petty, but it is a good example. The Power of One campaign is about individual responsibility, but the Minister cannot even convince any of his fellow Ministers to use cars that reduce emissions. He says he is promoting training and accreditation schemes, but he must be aware that when it comes to the accreditation of renewable energy installers, the blockage in terms of all-Ireland accreditation, is in the Republic, not the North of Ireland. He must also accept that the greener homes scheme, phase one, collapsed because it overran its budget and got into deep financial trouble, while the new scheme has no funding in place as far as we can see. I hoped Estimates might be on the way, but they are not.

Frankly, I think there is goodwill among the public. We do not need to sermonise continually and in any event I do not think it works. We have to test it and see where people are willing to make changes. It is like the plastic bag levy, if they are given the opportunity they make the change but we need to do it intelligently. The approach by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government where he talked about penalising cars over 1.6 litre engines even though they could be more energy efficient than smaller cars does not ring true with me and it can enrage as much as encourage.

There was an issue about reducing the public sector carbon emissions to energy reduction by 33%. That is a huge reduction. We have hospitals and schools in need of structural improvement as well as insulation which will require a big investment of money and we do not know from where it is coming.

We have great opportunities here. We could have an electricity generation system that is completely carbon neutral. That is a possibility. The technology is coming. We should try to be at the cutting edge of developing those technologies to ensure we live up to our legal and Government responsibilities but also to lead the way for other countries.

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