Mark Dearey (Green Party)

Ireland's industrial growth, according to the innovation task force, has experienced two inflection points since we began to embrace the notion of Ireland as a country capable of industrial production and move away from an agricultural, agrarian society. That is not to say the agricultural economy is not absolutely critical to Ireland's future. The inflection points identified by the innovation task force were in the 1960s and 1980s. The decision in the 1960s was to invest in human capital, primarily through free education at second level. The country moved by a quantum into a new era of export led growth and industrial development in the 1980s with the decision to engage in social partnership. The deal provided for industrial peace in return for reduced levels of personal taxation and a low corporation tax rate. The innovation task force says we need a third inflection point at the start of the second decade of this new century.

I commend and recognise the merit of the Government motion, and will support it, but I can see that more needs to be done if we are to make the third step happen. This will make good on the key decisions of the 1960s and 1980s. This time, it will be more complex and less easily achieved than if there were difficult to implement but simple policy decisions. The context in the 1960s and 1980s was that the world was slow-moving. Ireland had a much lower base from which to grow as a well off economy within the European context. The challenge is much greater now and the complexity of the response that will be needed to maintain national wealth and personal wealth and take our place as an exporting nation at the forefront of exporting nations will be more complex and difficult. Nonetheless, it is happening.

I advise Senator Phelan that Senator Donohoe recently identified Innovation Ireland as probably the finest document to come from this current Government period. Having read it again, I tend to agree with him. It is the plan that Senator Buttimer said the Government does not have. It contains many alignments with the Fine Gael's NewERA. While there are divergences there are definite points on which the two documents touch. For Senator Buttimer to say there is no plan is trite and untrue.

The innovation taskforce report is an extraordinarily impressive document. It emerged as a result of a recommendation, among a key handful of recommendations, in the Smart Economy document that we drive innovation. This taskforce set out to show how that might be done. As I read through some of the recommendations, I note a number of them have been acted on in this term. I hope the next Government takes up the challenge of acting on more of the recommendation because I believe we can achieve this new inflection point in the early part of this decade. It is necessary that we do it. It is not only about regaining and maintaining competitiveness or of taking on board the lessons of the OECD report, which I agree were extremely worrying and are not only confined to mathematics and science but include the need for polylingual skills in this country. I argue that children need to learn Chinese, or whatever other languages become dominant in the international markets, in school from an early age. Education will be critical. If the additional points that are to be given for mathematics were extended to some of the key languages, I would have no complaints. That recommendation on the allocation of additional points is one that emerged from a report and is one on which the Government has acted.

I spoke recently to people in PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, about how Irish suppliers to big international companies are now under pressure to drive the carbon out of the products and services they supply abroad. It is becoming a pressure to which many of them feel they need to respond rapidly. In terms of accounting procedures, PwC is assisting many Irish companies in meeting that challenge.

The demand to drive carbon out of our export of goods and services will not stop. One need only look at Google's recent investment as the lead investor in a wind farm stretching 350 miles off the California coast to realise that it wants to be able to say of its data centres and service to its multimillion consumers that it is a company that is delivering its goods and services in a low carbon way. We need to monitor that kind of investment. Our small and medium sized enterprises in that sector need to be able to respond to that and keep the level of carbon as low as possible in the products they provide.

Such companies on investing here also examine Ireland's ability to work and provide power for their businesses in a low carbon way. There is great hope there and many Senators on both sides of the House have spoken about the potential of the renewable sector in Ireland.

It is interesting that we have managed to get to the point we are at today despite being poorly endowed in fossil fuel supplies. We did not have any discovered gas when we were trying to grow the country in the earlier decades, although we have discovered a certain amount now. However, when it comes to the old fuels, we are poorly endowed but yet we managed to develop as a strong economy, although I agree we need to regain that strength. However, we managed to do it in one cycle.

As we move away from a fossil fuel economy - that is not a wishful statement as we are in the early stages of doing that - to a post-fossil fuel energy era, we are a well endowed country. We have moved from being a country that has had to import its energy to one that ultimately will be an energy exporter. That will give us an enormous edge in terms of that inflection point and it will be a product that we will export. Our energy policy, investment in our grid and the investment that has been planned by the ESB, Bord Gáis and Bord na Móna, which will amount to €30 billion when it is totted up over the next decade, will effectively will drive energy exports, and that will be critical.

In terms of the message that has gone out from Ireland lately, I spoke recently to our man in Chicago, the IDA person there, with whom I go back a long way, about the impact of the stories of Ireland in the US press in terms of his job of trying to attract inward investment into Ireland in the form of foreign direct investment. He said it is hard to predict but he expects that 2011 will be a good year for investment from US companies into Ireland and that while there are negative messages there, Ireland is to the forefront of people's minds. The IDA is boxing clever in the United States at present and using the opportunity to speak to people to whom it has not spoken previously in parts of America to which it has not been previously. To use the old cliché, even this particularly dark cloud may have a silver lining if the IDA continues to use its influence and renowned skillset overseas in attracting foreign investment into Ireland. I am optimistic that prediction will come true. Such influence is being coupled with the work of Enterprise Ireland's network of offices all around the world. I have heard direct stories from very small exporting companies in my area - I am sure such stories are replicated throughout Ireland - of where Enterprise Ireland offices are fast-tracking and making it easier for companies that have innovative products and services to get into marketplaces in large cities around Europe and further afield. I am extremely encouraged when I hear those stories of direct care and concern for small Irish businesses by Enterprise Ireland in the way it makes it much easier for Irish companies to overcome language barriers, bureaucratic barriers and taxation issues as such companies begin to move into unfamiliar territories. I commend Enterprise Ireland on that engagement. Much of it is unseen because this does not involve a large number of jobs. It is not the stuff of Intel announcements, which I very much welcome, but it is critical.

In regard to the climate Bill and whether it will impair Irish growth, I appeal to Members to look at the facts. Under current commitments, by 2020 Ireland will need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide it emits in its production of goods and services from 64 million tonnes a year, which is the current level, to 47 million tonnes. The climate Bill commits us to reduce our emissions from 64 million tonnes to 47 million tonnes a year by 2020. That means there is no difference involved, in that no additional burden is being put on the Irish economy in gross tonnage terms over the period than is already committed to under our 2020 obligations. Any attempts to present that Bill as being a dead hand on the prospects for the Irish economy are untrue. I have made the case already that we need to drive carbon out of our production. I believe that Bill will do that and make us more attractive to inward investment and our exports more saleable in a global market that is expected to reach a value of €5 trillion by 2015.