Mark Dearey (Green Party)

The Minister of State is welcome. I wish to address two items that were dealt with at the European Council meeting last week, namely, preparations for the climate summit in Cancun and the establishment of a robust and credible permanent crisis mechanism. I shall take the latter item first.

It is clear the day such a mechanism will be required has been in the offing for a long time. The notion of a single currency across a divergent range of economies within the European Union always suggested that, ultimately, some kind of regulatory, disciplinary mechanism would be required. The delicate balance that will be needed between governance of the eurozone and a kind of creeping government of Europe is an important line we need to tread and stay on. It would be against the wishes of the citizenry of Europe to have this mechanism, which as circumstances clearly demonstrated is essential, become a vanguard for a more extensive kind of government of Europe through financial mechanisms. That is not what the citizenry of Europe want and it would lead to a greater sense of the democratic deficit we often speak about when we speak about European politics.

This mechanism is needed. I look at some of the pro-cyclical policies that stoked the boom and wonder whether a mechanism such as has been suggested would have spotted the property bubble. I suspect it would have. Would it have had the power to curtail some of our pro-cyclical policymaking? I suspect it would have. Would it ultimately have taken some of the excess out of the asset bubble we all experienced? I suspect it would have. For these reasons it is important it should implemented. The question is how it can. The advice received by the Joint Committee on European Affairs is that there is always the possibility - Senator White was correct about this - that changes to the Lisbon treaty might require a constitutional referendum. I welcome the Taoiseach's view, expressed last week, that such changes probably could be limited so as not to impact on our Constitution. A constitutional referendum following so closely on the heels of the Lisbon treaty referendum is not desirable and would not be welcome. That belief would apply on any side of the House. A referendum would give oxygen to a range of opinion which was invalidated by the last Lisbon treaty referendum despite its victory in an earlier round. We do not need to open up again that range of often spurious debate.

Regarding the kinds of changes required, I understand the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, will do a round of European nations to discuss individual needs and get a feel for the kinds of limited treaty changes that would be acceptable throughout Europe. In that situation, I hope Ireland will stress how undesirable it would be to have changes that might require a referendum. That is my cautionary word about the changes envisaged but it is not to diminish in any way my sense of the need for a robust, fixed and permanent mechanism to replace the temporary mechanism that was established during the emergency situation of the Greek debt crisis. We need a broader range of parameters for what would trigger an intervention. The Growth and Stability Pact is based on an annual deficit of 3%. It is necessary that public debt should also be taken into account to a greater extent annually and that this in itself would trigger the alarm bells within the mechanism in order that we would not merely have a target of a deficit of 3% of GDP but the overall public debt would become a metric by which this new mechanism could be triggered.

On the preparations for the Cancun meeting and the follow-on conference of the parties, COP, from the Copenhagen event last year, expectations are being seriously dampened down regarding the prospect of a breakthrough on a global climate deal. Europe has indicated its willingness to participate in a new scheme beyond the Kyoto Agreement which comes to an end in 2012. I welcome that. Talk of moving to a 30% reduction in carbon emissions is not being highlighted this time. I do not know whether the Minister of State agrees with me that, to an extent, Europe left the other nations behind in Copenhagen and the United States, South Africa, India and Brazil effectively had their own meeting towards the latter end of the Copenhagen meeting. Europe, the most progressive voice in addressing the global catastrophe that may occur if we do not deal with the prospect of runaway climate change, was left outside the door. It is no exaggeration to say that, as an institution, Europe was wrong-footed and humiliated on that occasion. I hope I do not overstate the matter but that is how it seemed to me as a close observer of what took place in Copenhagen last December.

There seems to be a more cautious approach now, in some respects, but I hope it will keep Europe in the room this time and will allow other nations to see themselves as equals in negotiations. I hope this approach, by aiming slightly lower, may achieve more than the Copenhagen summit.

I am not happy that we are aiming lower, as the situation is as critical as it could possibly be. I am still of the view that climate change abatement needs to happen through an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, and I am not going to diverge from what the International Panel on Climate Change has been saying. Despite some criticism and scandals its scientific view is essentially intact and robust. We need to affirm the reality that the targets need to be met if we are not to trigger runaway climate change.

For the Mexico meeting, it is really important that the European Council gets its tactics right. In discussing the three key areas, the global economy, climate change and energy security and development, we must take the opportunity that the climate and economic crises present to create economic models that are not about increasing productivity and output on the basis of increasing carbon. The decoupling of growth and carbon emissions is often spoken about, and this is obviously something that must be achieved, rather than being talked about. I believe it can be achieved, in particular through energy capture, storage and efficiency in tandem with a new type of knowledge economy based on clean energy, along with a manufacturing economy based on a much smarter level of input. There should be a farming mechanism too that respects the limits of nature to provide for all of us on this planet.

The conference faces a massive agenda and I am very interested to hear the Minister of State's sense of what the Council believes Europe's role as a positive influence can be. China, in particular, is a country which even in the last 12 months has changed with extreme and impressive rapidity. I suppose that is as a result of being a one-party state, where things can be done quickly. Democracy is a precious flower but not always the fastest growing one. China presents a real cultural problem, as regards independent verification, for instance, which was a major issue at Copenhagen and could not be dealt with there because China was just not dealing on it.

The cultural problem for the United States was to the effect that President Obama could only go as fast as the oil lobby in Congress would allow him to. He has even bigger problems this time in that regard. What are the limitations since last year and what are the opportunities that did not exist last year? My sense, from a distance, is that China may be more receptive and better positioned to take a meaningful role in the next round following Kyoto.