Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have read what lots of other people have said and I listened to what the Minister has said. That can be the only explanation for the failure of the Government to include binding targets or even a definition of low carbon. It is the only explanation I can find for the fact that it has rejected the recommendation to have a fully independent advisory body on the setting out of plans and instead to have that body dominated by senior officials from State agencies.

Why do we not listen and why are we diluting demands for specific and concrete action on what is a national and global emergency? Why do we shy away from that and why do we dilute it? Why do we refuse to listen? It is because we are not listening to those people to whom we should be and are instead listening to some minority set of interests. In the end, it is self-defeating for them. As we face the prospect of significant parts of the land mass of Ireland literally sinking under water and as we see the impact of flooding, including its devastating impact on agriculture, it is shortsighted and self-defeating from every point of view, including that of agriculture itself, to fail to understand that we need binding targets. We must be serious and concrete about moving to a low carbon economy and meeting our international targets in this regard.

In my last few minutes, I will set out a specific example at a sectoral level of our endemic attitude to these matters. I refer to forestry, an area about which I have spoken a great deal in the House. Forestry is something we know is a carbon sink. We know what the mitigating effects on carbon emissions of planting a particular number of trees are. There is also a positive spin off of significant employment. We had targets, which we have consistently failed to meet, to plant 25,000 hectares of forestry by 2000 and 20,000 hectares per year until 2030 to increase significantly our forest cover and approach something like the average European level. We are now far below that average. Average cover in Europe is approximately 30% to 35% but it is 11% in Ireland. We set targets to do something about it but have consistently failed to meet them in an area which would contribute significantly to addressing climate change while creating employment. It would be a win-win, but we do not do it. When the Forestry Bill came before the House, I suggested to the Minister that we should have binding targets but was told we could not. My amendments were ruled out of order because they would have incurred a charge on the Exchequer, but the Minister could have included them.

Why does the Government not include these targets? Why does it not want to do it? I got the same stuff when we discussed this in committee about the potential consequences for agriculture and the need to look at land use. The short term interests of one sector prevents action on something that will affect our entire society and our entire planet. It is shortsighted to respond to these things in this way. I do not understand it except to conclude that the Government and its Departments are held hostage by minority interests which will, in the end, drive this planet over the edge just as in recent years they have driven the global economy over the edge. They do not have the interests of society, our planet and our natural resources as a whole at heart; rather they have a short-term interest in profit and wealth. In diluting the demands of environmentalists and others to include specific targets, the Government has sadly shown which side it is on in this debate.

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