Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

I agree with Deputy Barrett. He and I have an unusual degree of consensus on rating agencies. It would make sense for the Commission proposals to be fast-tracked. There is something fundamentally bizarre about the existing rating agencies, in particular the major ones who were all involved in the crash in the United States and who were all saying up to a few days before Lehman Brothers went through the floor that bonds which they had to know had no value or substance were AAA rated. Court actions are being taken in that regard and there have even been suggestions of criminal activity against some of those agencies. That is the past. Deputy Barrett has made a good point about the necessity for Europe to have an independent approach to rating where sovereign debt in particular would be examined not through a prism of hysteria but with more clarity.

On Cancún the European Union objective is to get a legal agreement which would limit global warming to below 2° centigrade. That is the target. The figures of 20% and 30% are put in against that particular target. The European Union is working very hard to ensure that the Cancún conference, as Deputies Barrett and Howlin said, is not a repeat of the debacle that existed in Copenhagen. One of the points about the Copenhagen conference brings to mind the adage coined by the first British Prime Minister who had fallen asleep during a cabinet meeting. He said when they were leaving the cabinet room, Gentlemen, was it yea or was it nay, it matters not so much what we say as that we all say the same thing. That applies in this case because Europe did not speak with one voice. It was not a good time for Europe.

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