Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I believe they can be but it is not certain. Earlier, I read out some of the analysis of what has happened in recent years. The increase last year in our transport, agriculture and power generation emissions makes it harder. Every year we see emissions continuing to increase makes the scale of the change required on the other side of the equation all the greater. I believe, however, that we can do this for a variety of reasons. First, this is going to be good for our country. Let us take agriculture as one example. To meet the reductions necessary in this area, which are much lower than in other sectors, the action to be taken will largely be about providing new income streams to farmers in agroforestry. I do not know what the Deputy's expectation is, but I think the Government's new programme for forestry will take off. I think there will be huge demand for something new and innovative in the areas of riparian and other agroforestry schemes, because they pay and are achievable and deliverable. This is an example where this approach is better. I am just taking agriculture as one sector now, and the switch to anaerobic digestion gives us energy security, provides a new income stream for farmers and it is a known technology. It is not impossible. This is being done all over Europe.

Why can we not do it here? I am absolutely convinced we can. Our diversification into the likes of tillage or other markets would give us a more stable and secure agricultural system, particularly for the north and west of the country. The country is divided agriculturally very much into the north west and the south east with different characteristics, different climates and different soils, with one dairying and more intensive and one less so. For the north and west, there is significant potential here to turn it into an income stream by going genuinely orange and green and marketing ourselves. However, to be able to market it, one must do it. The worst crime here would be to greenwash - to say we are green but not in practice.

It is deliverable. My sense is - I do not know what Deputy Ó Cuív's is - that most of the people who I meet around the country buy into it, want to play their part and do not want to leave their children with the planet destroyed. If we can show them the way, which is not a punitive or a shaming way but a better way, we can make the leap, but it is a leap.

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