Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

The Government built it up for weeks beforehand. It was brought forward by seven or eight weeks. We were expecting some new initiatives or ideas yesterday that would give people hope that the Government was doing something definite to create jobs and slow down the unemployment snowball that is growing by the week. However, none of that is here. Instead, the Government is damaging economic activity. This budget will reduce what people spend. They will have less money in their pockets because they are paying more taxes. The Government is damaging the potential future for many small businesses and is adding to inflation and the overall cost of living in Ireland.

How does the Government think our marketplace looks to a foreign company considering Ireland as a potential place in which to invest and create employment? Does the Government think Ireland is more attractive in the wake of this budget? I do not think so. Ireland's success in the past two decades has been based primarily on competitiveness, a high quality education system and low tax rates but all of those elements are now being undermined by a budget which is purely a money-grabbing exercise. Families across the country are being asked to bail out the Government for its disastrous economic management in the past three years in particular, if not before then.

I am particularly interested in the carbon budget, of which the Government makes a big play. It is held up as an example of the green side of Government, about which we have heard from the Ministers, Deputies John Gormley and Eamon Ryan, today. However, if one compares last year's carbon budget figures to this year's figures, one sees immediately that the numbers do not tally. In both carbon budgets, the figures provided for 2006 are different, despite the fact that 2006 was a year for which we had hard and fast figures. In areas such as carbon sinks, which includes, for example, the contribution of forestry to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, the figures do not tally. I seek an explanation from the Government on that issue.

What is blatantly obvious from the carbon budget is that the country is going in the wrong direction, and dramatically so. The projections in last year's carbon budget indicated that by the end of 2012 we would have net carbon emissions of just over 65 million tonnes. That figure is now over 69 million tonnes. The whole point of setting up a carbon budget was to examine directional trends in terms of us meeting our climate change and emissions commitments. Unfortunately for the Government, the structure it set up is proof that the national climate change strategy is not working. The Government's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 3% per year is a joke at the moment.

The Minister said there has been press coverage to the effect that Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions have increased in the past year. Our emissions have increased but the Minister tries to massage the figures by introducing increases in forestry in Ireland, which do not even count yet in terms of the targets we face under our Kyoto Protocol commitments and those made to the European Union. Let us be honest with people. We are failing the climate change challenge at the moment.

I agree with much of what the Minister said earlier. He outlined the longer term strategy for meeting the challenge of reducing our emissions. It is important to say, at this point, that this is not a voluntary exercise. We are obliged to meet the commitments we make in Brussels and elsewhere. If we do not meet those commitments, we are fined. In this budget, the Government has set aside €50 million next year to pay fines for not meeting our emissions targets. That equates to almost €1 million per week from taxpayers because we are not meeting our targets. This is not just about a green agenda or something about which only environmentalists should be concerned. The fact that our climate change strategy is not working is costing every taxpayer in the country money. This is despite the fact that we supposedly have a green tinge to Government, with two key Ministries held by Green Party Deputies.

I wish to focus on a number of areas to which the carbon budget refers, particularly energy. I have a lot of time for the vision of the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Eamon Ryan, in terms of where he wants to take Ireland from an energy point of view. I welcome the fact that the Government has made a new commitment to 40% of our energy coming from renewable resources by 2020. It will be a tough task to achieve, but I welcome the ambitious thinking. The ESB is providing real leadership in this area, which should be acknowledged.

However, progress in the energy sector alone will not enable us to meet our international commitments because this is the traded sector in the European Union in terms of emissions targets. That sector has nothing to do with the Government vis-À-vis the commitments it makes. Post 2012, the large energy generators will have to purchase carbon allowances, which is what will drive their change in behaviour. In that context, we do not need to worry about the energy sector, apart from our overall responsibility to encourage change. That sector is not relevant in terms of meeting our commitments and avoiding fines. Even if 80% of our energy was generated from renewable sources, that would not solve our fundamental problems. It is the non-traded sector for which the Government has responsibility. Transport, residential, small industry and agriculture are the major areas where we need big ideas and those ideas are not coming forward. Let us not kid ourselves that the big idea from Government, led by the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Eamon Ryan, in terms of building turbines onshore and off-shore and creating energy and emissions efficient generation solves our climate change commitment problem although it is a good thing. We need to hammer this home and make it much clearer in our carbon budget. The carbon budget is about measuring the Government's performance as well as the country's performance in terms of emissions. We need far greater focus on the non-traded sector.

Transport is a major problem area, but it is a big area of opportunity if we had really ambitious thinking from Government on it. A target was set in the carbon budget this year that by 2020 10% of our road fleet would be made up of electric vehicles. Will the Government examine what other countries are doing? A target of 10% by 2020 is miserable in terms of making the switch from petrol, diesel and biodiesel run vehicles to electric vehicles. Let us get serious about promoting electric vehicles in Ireland.

Look at what they are doing in Israel. They are trying to switch an entire transportation system from carbon based fuels to electricity. They are doing it for political reasons as well as economic reasons because they do not want to rely on oil. Israel is not the only country doing this. Denmark is also doing it. Because Ireland is an island, it is an ideal place for this. For the first time, companies are offering viable solutions. Let us embrace these ideas and technology and make it happen. Whether it is a 5% or a 7% biofuel mix will not make the dramatic change we need in the transport sector to meet the commitments we have made. We need far more radical thinking in terms of our responsibilities, merging the transport and energy areas.

The energy by-product, if one wants to call it that, of a transport sector heavily reliant on electric vehicles is that if everyone in the entire country plugs a car in at 12 o'clock at night to recharge it we will have significant demand for electricity at 4 o'clock in the morning which we do not have at present. The big problem for energy generators in Ireland at present is the huge spike early in the morning when people get up and have showers. It then dies down, picks up again at lunch time, dies down and picks up again when people go home after work.

It is difficult to integrate inconsistent wind energy, and wind energy is inconsistent because it only blows approximately 40% of the time, often when we do not need the power. We need to find a way of storing electricity we can use later in the day or in the evening. One way to do so is to link transportation to electricity so people plug their vehicles in at night, in the afternoon or late in the morning when there is not a high demand for electricity. This would balance the curve of electricity demand which would be of major benefit to EirGrid which has responsibility to manage the electricity grid and to everybody proposing to build a wind farm, a tidal turbine or wave bob. Let us have more ambitious thinking which is what we need but which is not at all evident in the carbon budget or in yesterday's budget.

I agree with a great deal of what my ministerial counterpart has to say on energy. However, I am hugely critical of his and his Government's performance in terms of the IT sector. How many times have we heard Ministers state that they want to create a knowledge economy in Ireland on the back of a world class information technology infrastructure? What is the Government's response? A 25% cut in the money it plans to spend on information and communications technology programmes. This is a reduction from €53 million to €40 million. The Minister expects us to take him seriously when he states he will put high speed broadband into schools throughout the country. He has no credibility on this issue.

We are cutting back in the most crucial infrastructural area for IT and knowledge economy development in Ireland in a dramatic way in this budget. This is a major mistake in terms of the type of jobs we want to create over the next one, two or five years. We will regret it. It reflects the lack of priority, broad thinking and understanding of what the economy needs to reignite.

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