Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 21, inclusive, together.

These questions relate to the Cabinet committee dealing with climate change and my attendance at the climate change summit hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York in September. I have been asked about meetings of the Cabinet committee dealing with climate change. The most recent meeting took place on 11 November. This was the second meeting of the newly constituted Cabinet committee on economic infrastructure and climate change, which will ensure that discussion of the climate change agenda is fully integrated into broader discussions on economic infrastructure. The next meeting of this committee will be scheduled as required. In the meantime, senior officials from relevant Departments continue to meet on a regular basis to deal with climate change issues. The issues are also dealt with, when appropriate, at the Cabinet committee on European Affairs.

I have also been asked a series of questions concerning my attendance at the UN summit on climate change on 23 September last. I attended this summit at the invitation of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who hosted the event at the UN headquarters in New York. The summit was convened in an effort to add political momentum to ongoing negotiations to have a binding global climate change agreement. It is hoped that agreement on a deal will be reached by the end of 2015 when Heads of State and Government are due to meet in Paris under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The summit in New York was an important stepping stone towards next year's UN conference in Paris. Representatives of almost 170 nations attended the event, making it the largest gathering of Heads of State and Government to discuss climate change issues since the 2009 UN conference in Copenhagen.

During my address to the plenary session, I emphasised the need for progress towards a globally binding agreement and called on other nations to step up to the plate in dealing with the challenges posed by climate change. The global community cannot afford another failed set of negotiations, as happened in 2009 at the Copenhagen conference. I indicated that Ireland supported the EU objective of bringing forward our contribution to a global climate deal by the first quarter of 2015 at the latest.

In my address, which had input from a range of Departments before I finalised it, I highlighted areas where Ireland was making significant progress in addressing the climate change challenge. This includes our world class performance in regard to carbon efficient agriculture and food production; our implementation of a range of carbon pricing instruments, including a carbon tax; our long-term policy objectives to support the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy; and our intention to enact climate legislation in the near future. I also highlighted Ireland's strong contribution to aiding the climate mitigation and adaptation efforts of other countries, particularly through our contributions to fast start climate finance and to supporting the climate justice agenda.

I attended both the opening session and the plenary session of the summit. I did not have any side meeting. Deputies will be aware that the former President of Ireland, Ms Mary Robinson, was appointed earlier this year by UN Secretary General Ban as his Special Envoy for Climate Change. She played a pivotal role in ensuring the success of the climate change summit in New York. While I did not meet the former President on the day of the summit itself, I did have a very useful meeting with her here in Ireland before I departed for New York. Mary Robinson is an internationally respected figure whose foundation does tremendous work in addressing the climate change challenge, and particularly the important issue of climate justice. In her latest role as Special Envoy for Climate Change, she helped ensure that world leaders joined the summit in a very significant way and numbers, and added to the awareness of the need to achieve a global agreement by the end of next year.

Notwithstanding our constrained investment capacity, Ireland is playing its part in relation to this important challenge, like increasing levels of renewable energy and addressing emissions from agriculture while at the same time maintaining our commitment to meeting global nutrition and food security objectives in a carbon-efficient manner. We continue to work closely with other member states and the European Commission to devise ways to improve continuously the level of carbon efficiency in our agriculture sector. Now, we have signalled our interest in the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture and look forward to working with partner countries outside the EU to advance further our understanding of how to produce food for a global population while at the same time maximising our contribution to the global effort on climate change.

Within the European Union, Ireland is making a strong contribution to the overall effort despite an extremely challenging set of 2020 targets compounded by the impact of the economic crisis since those targets were set. While the Government supports the principle of an ambitious contribution by the European Union for 2030, it is determined to ensure the sharing of that contribution across the European Union's member states is fair and recognises Ireland's specific challenges and specific circumstances. This means taking proper account of Ireland's agricultural sector, which already is highly carbon-efficient, as well as recognising the severe limitations on capital investment over a number of years arising from the fiscal crisis and the constraints of Ireland's EU-IMF programme. At the European Council last month, I emphasised these concerns strongly and am satisfied we are making progress in what will continue to be challenging negotiations in the coming months.

I also indicated Ireland's support for a number of important international initiatives on climate change. These include a World Bank statement on carbon pricing, the phasing down of climate potent hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs, and the global green freight action plan. I also signalled Ireland's interests in a new initiative on climate-smart agriculture. These are just the latest of a number of examples in which Ireland is working closely with its counterparts within the European Union and internationally to deal with the climate change challenge.

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