Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was pleased with several of the appointments to Cabinet with a remit in this area because I considered them people of real ability. However, the inaction on climate change is the greatest disappointment to me in terms of the activity of this Government. Climate change is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the most serious issue facing our planet. Hundreds of thousands of people are losing their lives on an annual basis because of it. The political instability it is creating across the mid-east and north of Africa is leading to the fall of regimes and to millions of people coming to Europe's shores as refugees. The response by the Government has been disastrous. That we are at the bottom of the European class in terms of the results we are showing is an embarrassment to everybody in this Chamber.

The frustrating thing about it for me is that many of the mitigating activities that have been proposed would actually create jobs and fix balance of payment problems on a radical basis. This year, I launched a report on farming in Ireland and some of the figures contained therein are shocking. There are only 44,000 farmers in the State who are economically viable, for example, and the average wage for a cattle farmer is €12,500. Imagine if there were some way of giving money to farmers and meeting our energy needs as a country? What might be achieved if those needs intersected in some fashion? It drives me mad that we are not availing of the opportunities that are there with regard to biodigestors, micro-generation of solar and wind power and so on. All that is needed is a feed-in tariff to allow farmers to connect that electricity into the grid. How long does it take to create such a tariff? All the countries around us have had them in operation for ages. In the Six Counties, the roofs of buildings are festooned with solar panels that are sucking energy from the sun, providing energy for households and feeding excess energy into the grid. Yet we have no date for the introduction of a feed-in tariff. Why is Bord na Móna importing millions of euro worth of biomass from Africa? Why has the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine not created a supply chain mechanism to allow it to be produced in Ireland? It is incredible that money is being placed in pockets outside this country while our farmers are on their knees begging for funding. How can Britain under the Tories create more electricity via solar from March to September than it produces via all of its nuclear energy and all of its coal-fired stations? In this country, meanwhile, there is not one solar farm connected to the grid, never mind households or farmers being able to access the grid. It is incomprehensible.

Cycling is very good for alleviating congestion in cities, taking CO2 out of the system, cleaning diesel fumes out of the air and improving the general fitness of those who engage in it.

Cycling is operating on the clippings of tin in this country. The number of people dying in cycle accidents is increasing every year because this Government is not creating a safe way for people to cycle.

I had the opportunity to visit the office for control of the grid in Brussels where I was shown trends in grid capacity in Belgium. The grid capacity is falling. I thought that must be because energy use is falling but I was told that microgeneration means less capacity will be needed in the grid in the future. We are nowhere near to having microgeneration of energy in this country. Why not? How long does it take? The only glaciers that are immune from global warming are the Departments of Communications, Climate Change and Environment and Transport, Tourism and Sport.

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