John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to devote my whole contribution to solar power, but I must make the point that something is wrong whether guidelines are required or not. We do not have the output that we should have. It is fine to say that we will have further wind power and so forth. To achieve reliability and continuity, we need a mix of renewables rather than being overly dependent on one source or another.

The other comment I want to make concerns transport. It is interesting to note that it was only last week that the low-emission bus trial began in Dublin. The Government had been talking about that for ages. The Minister has to take responsibility across all the Departments in Government, not just his own. Funds and programmes have been made available but the actual implementation is very slow. I have been asking the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport about low-emission buses for Dublin for a considerable time. This does not account for a huge output but it leads by example. It sets a precedent for transport infrastructure for Dublin in the future. The Government has a key role to play in that. There is a carbon reduction programme in the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport with about €5 million available to it. I understand that the vast bulk of that money has not even been used this year.

These are the challenges facing the Minister. We can have scheme after scheme and programme after programme, but if the implementation is not there, we will not make progress. To return to the point I made at the beginning, while our fines are relatively low, the annual costs of failing to meet those targets will grow if we continue on the path we are on because of the credits carried forward from the recession.

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