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

The striking thing about the regular pronouncements on the urgency of dealing with climate change and big summits at which commitments are made to take action is that they start to unravel almost immediately afterwards. We hear grand and noble aspirations and much public relations work is done on what action will be taken to address climate change. We then quickly discover that individual players who are happy to trumpet their commitment on this matter quickly begin to back away from taking any real action on it. The facts surrounding climate change have emerged and they suggest the position is worsening, despite all the promises to take serious and urgent action. This has certainly been the scenario that best describes what has taken place in the year since the Paris summit, both in terms of this State and the wider global picture.

The Taoiseach took a script with him to Paris which stated Ireland was serious about climate change and would play its part in addressing it. However, as Oisín Coughlan, director of Friends of the Earth Ireland, pointed out in his blog on the Paris summit, the Taoiseach then gave a wink to the Irish media to the effect that we would not do any of this because to do so could, as the Government sees it, infringe on our national strategic economic interests, in particular, the Government's commitment to the beef sector. Rhetorically, therefore, Ireland will play its part but in reality, we immediately started to engage in special pleading to get us off the hook and back away from any serious commitment to reduce CO2 emissions. This was done because we did not want to upset the ranchers and big farmers. That is pretty much the size of it.

As I was about to leave my office for the Chamber, somebody joked that Deputy Danny Healy-Rae might as well be the Minister with responsibility for climate action. I do not mean any disrespect to the Minister by saying this. According to Deputy Healy-Rae, climate change is an act of God and we should just pray. While that is not quite the Government's stance-----

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