Results 13,521-13,540 of 15,491 for speaker:Eamon Gilmore

Written Answers — Road Safety: Road Safety (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: Question 107: To ask the Minister for Transport if he will introduce primary or secondary legislation to set higher standards for the testing of HGVs in view of the very high percentage of Irish trucks found to be in breach of standards in the UK. [12639/07]

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: I wish to share my time with Deputy Wall. I compliment Fine Gael on tabling this motion, which is timely in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the Government's repeated attempt at a national climate change strategy.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: The Labour Party supports the Fine Gael motion. I was interested to hear the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Noel Dempsey, speaking about what he called the reheat programme and on credibility. I will speak briefly about both and will turn to the issue of reheating first. This is government by microwave. As it is too late for the Government to cook up...

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: ——on any area of policy one cares to mention, it digs out the old stuff, stirs it around a little, sticks it in the microwave, takes it out and pretends there is something new in it.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: Nowhere is this more evident than in respect of the climate change document that was published yesterday. If anything, the document published by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, is even less ambitious than that published by his predecessor, the Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, in 2000.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: I have read both. Admittedly, three years——

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, is not the only Member who can read.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: The issue of credibility——

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: The Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources should not go there. There is an issue in respect of credibility.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: Given the Government's record on the old climate change strategy, producing a new one is simply not credible. When the old climate change strategy document was produced in 2000, Ireland was 21% above the Kyoto Protocol limits. Its objective was to reduce that figure by eight percentage points and get it down to 13%. However, the Government only succeeded in going in the other direction and...

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: One would think that they had not been in Government at all because the list of measures they will take——

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: —— is a list of measures they have not done in the past ten years.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: Clearly this is being driven — I have seen the posters — by the fact that Fianna Fáil has discovered the future tense.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: It has discovered it from focus groups which have obviously persuaded the party leadership that the way for the guys to go — I am sure the advisers are the sort of people who use "guys" frequently in their colloquial language — is to keep telling them what they are going to do.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: They have been advised to refer to the next steps forward and to make sure the people forget about the past ten years. The advice is to delude the people into thinking that Fianna Fáil has not been in Government during that time.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: I give full marks to both Ministers for producing a climate change strategy document that is a reheated version of the old document and which sets out to do things that the Government should have done already.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: However, there is a serious side to this issue. The Fianna Fáil Government that was elected in 1977 plunged Ireland into a financial debt from which it took 20 years to escape.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: The Fianna Fáil Government that was elected in 1997 has now plunged Ireland into a carbon debt.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: This constitutes a new national debt from which it may take another 20 to 30 years to escape.

Kyoto Protocol: Motion (3 Apr 2007)

Eamon Gilmore: Instead of facing up to the imperative of the Kyoto treaty and the problems of climate change and doing something real to reduce carbon emissions, it has chosen to ignore the continuing rise in carbon emissions in Ireland and to buy its way out.