Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

The Deputy needs the No. 2 votes. After one year, a fair period to see what can be done in Government, we have merely seen tinkering around the edges with no substantive change on the targets set out in print by the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Gormley, last summer.

Once the Greens sacrificed their political virtue, we were told we would feel better and have a better quality of life. The Minister, Deputy Gormley, has made a substantial amount of running on the changes in VRT and motor tax rates. These had already been announced by the Taoiseach, Deputy Cowen, when he was Minister for Finance in 2006, so the Minister, Deputy Gormley, had nothing to do with them.

The manner in which these are being implemented has ensured, for the past six months, and three months in particular, that there has been no activity in car showrooms around the city or country in general. People were confused, ill-informed and did not understand what was coming down the tracks on 1 July. There will be a little spike in sales for the next couple of weeks for people who have held off but there will be a massive reduction in the amount of money coming into the Exchequer and local government fund. We will then see how the Estimates are faring because of those bad decisions.

A Government cannot be run by photo opportunity, which is what the Minister, Deputy Gormley, is trying to do. I would not blame him for getting €15 million for a campaign to inform people of the impact of climate change policy. At the same time he slashed the greener homes fund, which provided important assistance to householders seeking to insulate their houses.

Approximately 500,000 houses were built in the past seven or eight years, including 90,000 last year. Throughout this period proper energy efficiency standards did not apply and we must now play catch-up. Standards were an equally important issue when the Minister's two predecessors in the Department, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Noel Dempsey, and the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach, Deputy Dick Roche, were in office. We now find that a fund available to assist people, particularly the less well-off, is being slashed at the expense of an advertising campaign to promote the Minister.

The Minister will beat members of the public senseless with high cost advertising to conceal the reality that no meaningful change is taking place. The Government, of which the Green Party is a part, committed itself to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3% in each year of its term and by 8 million tonnes over the full five year term or 2 million tonnes nominally per annum over 2006 levels. We have not yet heard what progress was made in the Government's first year of office because it did not come within an ass's roar of meeting its target. On the contrary, we are heading in the opposite direction and the Government has no chance of delivering on its environmental promises. It is big on rhetoric and advertising campaigns telling the rest of us to make changes but low on delivery. It has failed to deliver in areas within its control and should have put the €15 million spent on the recent advertising campaign to better use. We cannot have a Government of photo opportunities and little action.

Citizens are well ahead of the Government and probably Parliament in dealing with this pivotal issue. They understand we are breaking European law and endangering our collective future and are increasingly tuned into the action required. According to a survey commissioned by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, almost everyone in Ireland believes the world's climate is changing. The same survey shows the overwhelming majority accept that humans are responsible for climate change. A similar majority are concerned about the issue, with three out of every ten respondents indicating they are very concerned about it. The encouraging finding is that an overwhelming majority want Ireland to play a leading role in tackling the problem of climate change and that only one third of the population believe the Government is doing enough to address it. More than eight in ten citizens believe it should do more.

We need to remind ourselves that the Green Party is in government. The small initiatives being taken are meaningless in achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The Green Party should examine its performance and accept it is no more than an appendix to the Fianna Fáil Party in government. It has done nothing about the massive carbon footprint of government, the Civil Service and public service, the bus fleet and other areas within the control of the State.

The famous slogan used by various people during the years, "A lot done, more to do", applies in this case. Unlike other countries, Ireland is becoming the exception in the European Union in meeting our Kyoto Protocol targets. The United Kingdom, Sweden and France are ahead of their targets, while it appears Germany, Belgium, Greece and the Netherlands will comfortably meet theirs. Why can Ireland not meet its targets, particularly given the Green Party element of the Government?

Climate change is the single biggest moral choice facing this generation. The Fine Gael Party and the Oireachtas must ensure we take decisive action, rather than running photo opportunities and advertising campaigns to pretend we are doing something.

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