The question is why have earlier environment initiatives not been implemented, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.
Against the unseemly backdrop of Galway's water crisis, Fianna Fáil is going to give local councillors power to adopt strategic water plans so that there will be at least a level of integration between development control and the need to protect water supplies from contamination.
That's one of the provisions of the Water Services Bill, which was due to pass all stages in the Dáil last night, and it was also included as one of the bright ideas in the party's environment manifesto, published yesterday. Otherwise, it was mainly a recitation of earlier promises.
Minister for the Environment Dick Roche trumpeted Fianna Fáil's achievements, noting yet again that Ireland was placed 10th out of 133 countries by the Davos World Economic Forum in 2006 for its environmental policies. Performance, however, wouldn't rate so highly.
He had to admit, for example, that "our new-found wealth has resulted in significantly increased carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks"; indeed, these are up 160 per cent since 1990 - a fact not unrelated to Ireland's unusually high reliance on road transport.
The Minister hailed the Greener Homes Scheme as a "runaway success", though without mentioning that the relatively paltry allocation to encourage householders to switch from oil to wood chips for home heating had been massively oversubscribed within months.
Having delayed the introduction of higher energy performance standards for new homes, with the result that some 200,000 were built to outdated standards, Fianna Fáil now promises to improve the energy efficiency of new homes "by up to 40 per cent and more".
The party's 17-page environment manifesto has a section headed "Next steps on Building Sustainable Communities", including new urban design guidelines. But it can hardly be reconciled with the spread of sprawl over which the Government has presided for the past 10 years.
This not only involved a laissez-faire approach to planning, with the result that Dublin's commuter belt now extends to 100km, but also the proliferation of single houses in the countryside, which account for at least a third of the output of new housing in recent years.
As for the contamination of groundwater and surface waters by effluent from septic tanks, among other threats, the Minister had a "way forward" - local authorities should follow North Tipperary County Council's example of siphoning effluent to a sewage treatment plant.
"Water issues have rightly been to the fore in the light of the cryptosporidium outbreak in Galway," Mr Roche said. Indeed yes. But he also complained that people "see it as free and are only concerned about it when there's a problem". No mention, however, of water metering.
An important commitment was made by Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan. Asked if food prices were to rise throughout Europe because of competition for land to grow crops for biofuels, she said the EU should review its ambitious targets for the emerging biofuel sector.
"The EU may have to do that if an imbalance emerges. After all, food security was the reason the European Community was set up, and I would vehemently oppose relying on imports," she said, conceding that a switch to biofuels "will pose challenges for the livestock sector".
Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources Noel Dempsey - who was minister for the environment from 1997 to 2002 - admitted that Fianna Fáil had not achieved every target it had set itself 10 years ago, nor had it "got everything absolutely right".
The real question, however, is why so many of the environmental policy initiatives it proposed then or announced in recent months were not implemented during the party's decade in office.