Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

I am delighted to hear it.

With the week that is in it, this is a good time to concentrate our minds on the challenge of climate change. There are two issues on which we must focus, namely, where flooding occurred and why, and the need for proper planning on this island. We must look long and hard at the planning decisions that were made in the past and consider whether they were the right ones.

We must be careful about jumping to the conclusion that the floods of the past ten days can be directly attributed to climate change. After all, we must not confuse weather with climate. Nonetheless, it is likely that climate change will bring more extreme weather events, a good example of which is increasing rainfall and consequent flooding. That is the lesson I heard when I went to see an excellent presentation by Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele in the Mansion House last week. Professor van Ypersele, who is the vice-chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, used raw science to show us what is going on and what needs to be done. It is a call for action, not just at a global or national level but within all our lives.

We must ask ourselves the hard question: are we doing enough in terms of how we consume and how we spew out carbon? It is easy to say one would love to do more but cannot because one's lifestyle does not allow it. People who say they need to fly to Majorca for a holiday or travel long distances for other reasons must ask themselves some long and hard questions. Within all our lives there is a considerable amount we can do, whether it be choosing public transport, considering emissions carefully when purchasing new vehicles, or changing our diets. Many people laugh at the suggestion that we should eat less meat; a British junior Minister said that eating one less sausage a day would go a long way in this regard. This is true. Those who eat less meat in their diets are responsible for far fewer carbon emissions by cattle or other animals. This is a good thing and part of what needs to be done.

There is quite a debate at present about whether the United States or China could contribute more to tackling climate change. In the United States, the can-do attitude, when it comes to the fore, is fantastic at achieving a complete change in direction quickly, which I applaud. The innovation and roll-out of new technologies such as wind energy generation across the US, particularly once the grid is working at a national level, will achieve a lot.

We tend to concentrate on the fact that China is now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and that a new coal-fired power station is opened every week, but much of what it is doing is in fact phasing out old coal stations, and the efficiency being achieved in the new stations is far ahead of the equivalent stations in the US. This should be pointed out. Although China has what we might call a rather centralised planning system, it is also good at changing direction when required. This will be done and China will come on board. The principles of both contraction and convergence are required. In other words, all countries, particularly in the West, must reduce their emissions and we must all converge towards a common allocation of carbon per capita. In the developed world we have much further to go in this regard, and we must provide the technology to developing countries to tackle climate change.

Much of what can be done is in the area of construction. My colleague, the Minister, Deputy Gormley, within a few months of taking office, had racked up by 40% the requirements in the building regulations, but we must go further, to 60%. That will mean not just 100 millimetres or 150 millimetres of insulation in the attic. It will mean air-tight houses and a completely different way of building to the way many buildings were slapped up in the boom years.

It is not just about what we build, but where we build it. A map from An Post's address creation system illustrates where new addresses were created in the past five years. Each little dot on the map - one can see only the blur - represents a new address. I do not see much evidence of avoiding flood plains in this image. I do not see much evidence of locating new homes in the right places so that one can commute less and be within walking distance of the school, the pub and the church. That is a call to arms. We need to provide proper planning. Deputy Hogan accused my colleague, the Minister, Deputy John Gormley, of bringing in social engineering at its worst. The Deputy also stated that he was sure the Minister means well, but it reminded him of soviet dictators. In reality, we need proper planning to tackle climate change. The measures the Minister is bringing in will help to deal not only with flooding, but also with tackling climate change. I look forward to some kind of a deal, if not in Copenhagen then in Mexico. The foundation stones need to be set in place before the end of this year.

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