Brendan Ryan (Labour)

If the Government deserves credit for anything, it is that it perhaps sustained the boom, but it did not create it because it was well under way, and that is a fact. However, because it was a boom and did not represent the things Governments in Ireland used to have to worry about, the Government stopped worrying. It did not look at the new issues and the new ideas, one of which, already well over the horizon, was the issue of climate change.

Perhaps at that stage there was no overwhelming scientific consensus but it was growing and even ten years ago, the majority of scientists, perhaps 60%, claimed the most likely reason global temperatures were on an upward curve was because of human activity and that it was not caused by sunspots or any of the other causes that are still being floated around. This is why the strategy of 2000, while belated, was welcome. However, the failure to meet its own quite limited targets is troubling.

I am unconvinced that the Government really believes climate change is perhaps the most important issue with which we are faced. This is the first occasion outside instances of war on which any generation has been obliged to make sacrifices in order to ensure future generations will have a world in which it will be worth living. This matter is continually discussed but nothing is ever done. We deal in short-term solutions. The market economy model to which we have become used is based on the idea that individuals operating in their own self-interests ultimately and accidentally create together the best possible outcome. That is simply not true. As the Stern report in the United Kingdom indicated, climate change is the greatest example of market failure the world has ever seen. There are market mechanisms which can be used but the market will not rectify climate change. Irreversible damage will have been done before any market force would begin to become evident. The insurance companies are beginning to realise this fact but that realisation is not widespread.

There is only one issue I wish to raise. Transport, energy and agriculture are the three biggest contributors to carbon emissions in this country. It is time we confronted the fact that agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.