Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thought that was covered by the previous question. That said, it gives me the opportunity to go back to the Taoiseach on the issue of electric vehicles. The Taoiseach is not facing up to the reality of the points that I and most people are making. No one is criticising ambition, but there is a responsibility to ground whatever proposals we are making in some framework of reality. No one I have spoken to sees any credibility attached to the electric vehicle target. The Government needs to do more to illustrate how it came to that figure and how it expects an extra 1 million vehicles to materialise within the next ten years given the poor performance to date in terms of transformation of the public transport system, which has been especially slow and belated indeed. We can add to that the issue of the smoky coal ban. The Government has simply not taken up the cudgel on that. It has funked that particular decision and decided not to finish or complete it, even though it was started well over 30 years ago. That was when the ban was first introduced. The air quality is showing this in the capital and elsewhere throughout the country.

On the one hand we had the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, at the launch warning about increased exposure to ultraviolet rays and skin cancer caused by climate change. On the other hand, the Taoiseach is saying we will have warmer winters, less heating and energy expenditure and fewer deaths as a result of the cold weather.

The first point is that we are having more extreme weather. That is what people have identified globally, and when I say people, I mean experts. Not only will there be more severe and dangerous storms that will cause injury and loss of life, but there will be an increased frequency of those storms globally. Certainly, this has materialised in Ireland in recent years. It has been one of the factors in alerting people to the issue of climate change. It has heightened people's sense of awareness and concern.

The whole idea of the carbon tax in many respects was around this energy question in terms of reducing the dependency on fossil fuels. The idea of the fuel allowance was to compensate for that. This is the first time I have heard that we will have lower fuel bills in terms of this entire agenda. We have just passed a budget that includes a measure to help people manage their fuel bills in future. There has been a tendency, particularly from deniers of climate change, to suggest that climate change will be great because we will have warmer weather in Ireland and that this somehow has pluses and so on. The Taoiseach needs to be careful about making those comments because it can undermine the broader case to try to convince people about the reality of climate change, that it is happening, that it will impact on people's lives and that the overwhelming outcomes and consequences of climate change are negative in terms of the quality of people's lives and in society in general. Those of us in this country are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels, especially low-lying areas. I am not clear at all that we have taken the proactive measures necessary to deal with that issue in the short to medium term.

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