Mark Dearey (Green Party)

I join other Senators in wishing all candidates well in the forthcoming Seanad elections. I wish to raise two items with the Leader, the first of which is the status of the Climate Change Bill. I note the plan is to decline it a Second Reading on the basis that all-party consensus has not been agreed. It is item No. 5 on the Order Paper. That is a great disappointment given the urgency of the issue and is antipathetic to the commitment given by the Labour Party when voicing on this side of the House the need for a strong and early climate change Bill. My colleagues and myself were berated time beyond measure on the need for the introduction of early legislation. I understand the Bill is consigned to the C list and that it will be 2012 or later before it is dealt with. That seems to me to be a volte-face, particularly on the part of the Labour Party. I would be interested in hearing the comments of Labour Party Members on it also but the debate is needed. The next round of global negotiations are coming up and we will be attending those without a compass, without targets, without a Bill and effectively neutered as we enter into that debate later in the year in South Africa. That is to be bemoaned in the extreme.

We have seen the price of private sector failure and regulatory failure in this country in regard to the banking crisis. The Stern report identifies the externalising of the price of carbon onto the environment as the greatest market failure in history, greater even than the one we are currently going through. Unless we prepare both in regulatory and in legal terms and are vigorously to the forefront of the global debate on the need to limit carbon emissions to at least 80% of their current levels by 2050, we will pay the price ultimately in terms of the environmental refugees who will be looking for a new home in this relatively temperate country and in terms of the cost of adaptation of our cities and towns, river banks, farming systems, transport systems and energy systems. The price of climate change will be massive. It is better to respond and adapt early than to pay the price after we have been visited by the disasters that it will cause. I ask the Leader to bring that issue forward, raise it with the Government and ensure there is urgent movement on the Bill and that the all-party agreement he seeks is secured at an early stage.