Opposition points finger at Greens as climate change meetings dwindle

SUBCOMMITTEE FOCUS:THE CABINET Subcommittee on Climate Change has held no meetings to date this year and held only two meetings during the whole of 2009.

The figures represent a significant decrease from 2008 when the committee, chaired by Taoiseach Brian Cowen, met a total of six times.

The information was included in a parliamentary reply to the Labour Party spokeswoman on energy Liz McManus, who contended it has strong evidence that the Government’s commitment to climate change has dwindled and that the Green Party had abandoned its core issue.

“The setting up of this Cabinet Committee on Climate Change was heralded by the Greens as an ‘indication of the priority this Government is attaching to addressing climate change’.

“It is now reasonable to assume the Government, including two Green Ministers and a Minister of State, attaches no priority to addressing climate change,” she said.

The spokesman for the Green Party in Government said the subcommittee had not met because senior officials involved were dealing, as a priority, with the preparation of the Climate Change Bill. He said the Heads of the Bill would be with Government “soon”.

It came as the chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Climate Change also made scathing criticism of the Government’s engagement with the issue.

Fine Gael TD Seán Barrett said yesterday that the committee which the Greens had insisted upon when entering coalition with Fianna Fáil was now “forgotten about”.

Mr Barrett made his comments when it emerged the committee was not on Department of Energy’s circulation list for comments on the drafts of a key document it is preparing on Ireland’s renewable energy targets.

The Dún Laoghaire Deputy said the Government had not responded to any of its key publications, including a Bill on offshore renewable energy, its Climate Change Bill, and its report on the development of electric vehicles in Ireland.

“We have been led to believe that we are literally wasting our time sitting in this room.

“You would think that we are automatically on the circulation list for comments.

“It’s very frustrating,” Mr Barrett told officials from the Department of Energy.

Martin Finucane, Una Dunne and Richard Browne of the Department’s renewable energy division gave an update to the committee on progress towards renewable energy targets.

Mr Finucane said that the EU-imposed target for renewable energy for Ireland was that it would comprise 16 per cent of all energy by 2020.

The constituent parts would be of 40 per cent renewable energy in the electricity sector; 10 per cent in transport and 12 per cent in heat.

The percentages for 2009 were 14.4 per cent in electricity; 1.5 per cent in transport and 3.9 per cent in heat.

In response to criticism from Mr Barrett that the Government was “form-filling” but achieving little, Mr Finucane said that there had been engagement right across Government departments in meeting the targets.

Mr Browne also told the committee the transport figure had gone from zero to 1.5 per cent because of the mineral oil tax and the biofuel obligation of a minimum of a 4 per cent biofuel mix in transport fuels would increase the percentage when it came into being in July.

The officials said that rather than having a small number of vehicles like buses running on 100 per cent biofuel, the new obligations targeted all vehicles.

“Everybody is driving a car with between 2 per cent and 7 per cent per cent of biofuel. That is how you will get mass-market penetration,” said Mr Finucane.

Fine Gael energy spokesman Simon Coveney said that certain Government departments do not know what is going on in other departments.