Bertie Ahern's record on environmental issues over the last decade has failed to keep pace with his rhetoric, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
One of the most serious threats to our planet, they said, is global warming. Their aims, they said, would be to "reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels", cut the State's overall energy bill and "chart a different course if our quality of life is to become sustainable".
They went on: "We in Ireland cannot continue to ignore the fact that our fossil fuel sources of energy - coal, oil, turf, gas - are non-renewable and contribute, through the associated emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, to the greenhouse effect and global warming.
"Our immediate task is to reduce and then eliminate the environmentally harmful effects of our present energy usage [ and] set about seriously examining alternative energy resources." And since housing accounted for so much energy consumption, a radical change of approach there was needed.
That's what Fianna Fáil said in a 60-page policy document, Our Environment, Our Future, issued during the 1997 general election campaign. And now, a full decade later, Bertie Ahern is embracing the environment once again, telling Ógra Fianna Fáil last month about the importance of protecting it.
"Into the future, the challenge is not to just talk about the environment but to deliver policies that work, policies that deliver environmental sustainability, economic growth and balanced development," the Taoiseach said, adding that "the ultimate test for a party in Government is delivery". Indeed it is. In that context, it is worth examining the measures promised in Fianna Fáil's 1997 policy document to see whether they were delivered. So many "actions" were to be taken across 16 sectoral areas that it would be impossible to give a full scorecard, but here are four examples:
* "Far stricter building regulations will be introduced, covering insulation and other energy saving measures". It took years to upgrade the regulations, with the result that tens of thousands of new homes were built to the old standards, leaving a legacy of higher heating bills and correspondingly high CO2 emissions.
* "A 'Green' building rating will be developed for energy efficiency". Energy ratings, required by an EU directive, were finally introduced on January 1st - but the long "lead-in" period granted by Dick Roche means that they will only apply generally to new homes from the middle of next year onwards.
* "Car tax will reflect the energy efficiency of vehicles". Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT) is still levied on the basis of engine size (with reduced rates for hybrid and biofuel cars) and it was not until Budget 2007 that a change to reflect CO2 emissions was announced - although this won't take effect until next year.
* "The 'Polluter Pays' principle will be applied to the agriculture sector as it is to all other sectors". Contrast that bold promise with the tortuous, and very belated, implementation of the EU Nitrates Directive, where Teagasc had to revise its scientific advice in response to pressure from farming bodies.
In December 1997, just six months after the general election, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change was adopted. Under the EU "burden sharing" deal aimed at implementing it, Ireland undertook to cap the rise in its greenhouse gas emissions at 13 per cent (relative to 1990 levels) in the period 2008-2012.
In October 2000, with the ostensible aim of meeting this challenging target, then minister for the environment Noel Dempsey published the Government's National Climate Change Strategy. A whole range of measures was proposed, but there was no real commitment to implement them across the board.
For example, ministers decided in 2004 not to impose a carbon tax proposed in the strategy. It seemed that climate change was put on the back burner, largely because the Government didn't really expect Kyoto to come into force after George Bush announced in March 2001 that the US was disowning it.
But this calculation turned out to be wrong, because Kyoto came into legal force in February 2005 with Russia's long-awaited ratification of the treaty. The wigs were truly on the green then for any developed country that hadn't started taking serious steps to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Any of the "actions" promised in 1997 could have been taken at any time over the past 10 years, if the Government had the wit to do so - or the courage that it showed (for once) by imposing the ban on smoking in public places. Instead, the climate change agenda drifted in political limbo until now.
"We will take the right decisions - and the hard decisions - to do otherwise would be to betray our obligations to the planet," the Taoiseach told Ógra Fianna Fáil.
This is hollow rhetoric from someone who has led a Government for 10 years that has so little to show apart from a recent advance on wind power.
Bertie Ahern has vowed to "move Ireland to a low carbon economy" using wind and wave power, biofuel production, "clean coal generation technology for future power stations" and a mandatory programme of energy efficiency in the public sector, including the sole use of long-life light bulbs.
The White Paper on Energy sets out an ambitious target of generating a third of all electricity from renewables by 2020. We will also have to meet the EU pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, even though ours are now more than 25 per cent higher than they were in 1990.
In the short term, to comply with our Kyoto obligations, the real money will go to "investing" in carbon credits, to offset the failure to cut emissions at home. "Climate change is a global issue," the Taoiseach said. "A tonne of carbon saved in Africa is as good as a tonne of carbon saved in Ireland."
This is true, but only in a narrow, technical sense. There is no moral equivalence, because Ireland's annual CO2 emissions work out at 11.5 tonnes per capita, whereas the average for sub-Saharan Africa is just 0.7 tonnes, 16 times lower. After all this time, Bertie Ahern still doesn't get the message.