Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for his statement in which he outlined his role at the UN climate change summit but he omitted one part of a very progressive politically-correct speech that he made. In the speech, the Taoiseach stated there is no time to waste in the fight against climate change and then he went to the European summit the following month and argued for concessions on Ireland's carbon emission reduction targets. He explained here in some detail why he did that, but surely he sees the contradiction between the position he took up at the UN climate change summit in New York and then the realpolitik of his position at the European summit. The Taoiseach has not explained that contradiction. The sensible thing would have been for him to have stated at the UN summit what he later stated at the EU summit.

All of us are alert to the dangers to the planet and we all have seen in our own lifetimes how the climate in our own small island has changed. Some world leaders, including former President Mary Robinson, have done significant work in making this issue a global issue. I happen to agree with the broad principle that there is no time to waste but then I wonder why it took three years since the Government came into power before it introduced the climate change legislation. The heads of Bill were only published in April last. I welcome them but they display a lack of binding targets which is a fatal flaw in any legislation, no programme, no timeframe and no sense of setting targets which would be both binding and achievable. As I am sure the Taoiseach will be aware as he is around here longer than I am, any legislation which does not contain those elements is little more than aspirational.

If what the Taoiseach stated in New York is a statement of Government policy, if there is no time to waste, we need a specific set of targets and we need these to be combined with an overall strategy, which is about reducing our dependence on imported fossil fuels and about the development of renewable energy, which, I am sure the Taoiseach will agree, would have the potential to create thousands of jobs. If we do not have that type of policy, then the agenda will be set by private operators, and perhaps that is the Government's agenda in the first essence. We have seen a lot of this, for example, the abandoned project to export wind-generated electricity rather than utilise renewables to reduce our CO2 emissions, which, clearly, should be an objective of any climate change legislation. Then, if I understand it properly, Dublin City Council voted against the Poolbeg incinerator project but that has been proceeded with. It is an issue the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government should be dealing with.

All of us have seen severe weather. We have seen it in flooding. We have seen the way our coastal regions have been hit with untypical weather. Therefore, climate change is a reality.

There is no point in going to big conferences and making the correct speech and then failing to take decisive action on the urgent issue. The Taoiseach draws attention to the big powers, China and India, which were both absent from the UN summit, but that does not mean we cannot act in our own place. We are teaching children to recycle. We cannot say to those children it does not make a difference because we are telling them that it does. Could the Taoiseach try to explain the "no time to waste" rhetoric of New York in the absence of no-time-to-waste legislation in the Dáil?

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