I welcome an tOllamh Peadar Kirby from the University of Limerick. I draw his attention to one or two procedural items before we commence. By virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to this committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence in relation to a particular matter and they continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and they are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise nor make charges against any person(s) or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

The opening statements and any other documents submitted may be published on the committee's website after proceedings this afternoon.

The committee is currently considering the outline heads of the climate action and low carbon development Bill 2013. It is imperative, from our point of view, that we initiate discussion around this subject with people, so that the report we compile will reflect those views. The object of this exercise is to produce legislation. The heads of the Bill have been published.

As the first legislation of its kind in this country, it is an historic and unique step for the Houses of the Oireachtas. The joint committee is the lead committee in driving forward the agenda and compiling the report. I look forward to the exchange between members and our guests as we seek to tease out their views on how to develop an outline of a Bill into legislation. I invite Professor Kirby to make his presentation.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gcoiste as ucht cuireadh agus deis a thabhairt dom teacht i láthair chun cur síos a dhéanamh ar an téama fíorthábhachtach seo.

My submission to the joint committee dealt with five issues, namely, the absence of targets in the outline heads of Bill; allocating overall responsibility for climate change to the Department of the Taoiseach; the conditions written into the outline heads of Bill that may limit the achievement of the goal of decarbonisation; the composition and role of the national expert advisory body; and the need to balance reference to a low carbon economy with reference to a low carbon society. Assuming my submission has been read by all members, I will concentrate on emphasising the urgency of the issues involved and the need for courageous leadership.

I came to the issue of climate change through a career spent examining issues of social, economic and political development in Ireland, Latin America and globally. As I have acquainted myself with the growing scientific evidence on climate change, I have become increasingly concerned both at the enormous, indeed momentous, challenges this poses for society and the disconnect between the evidence of science, which is demanding immediate and urgent action, and the meagre and completely inadequate responses by most sectors of society, including our political leaders. As a professional social scientist, I have not hidden my view that most of what we are teaching in all branches of the social sciences – political science, which is my area, economics and sociology and development studies being those with which I am most acquainted - misses the fundamental challenges we face. We are educating a generation that is ill prepared for the serious challenges of social change with which they will have to cope. It is partly for this reason that I took early retirement last year to devote myself more fully to writing and teaching on the challenges climate change poses for society, including for the ways we teach the social sciences. I am currently writing a book on this subject.

In case members may be less than impressed by this subjective response, in other words, my wish to share my personal experience with the joint committee, I will substantiate my position by citing a most authoritative source, namely, the German government’s high level Advisory Council on Global Change - WGBU are its initials in German - which reports directly to the Chancellor’s office. In its 2011 report entitled, World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability, the advisory council highlights the "drastic change in direction [that] must be accomplished before the end of the current decade in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to a minimum by 2050". This "great transformation" as it is described, "encompasses profound changes to infrastructures, production processes, regulation systems and lifestyles, and extends to a new kind of interaction between politics, society, science and the economy". Such a transformation, it continues, is "unique in history" and goes "far beyond technological and technocratic reforms" involving "a new global social contract for a low-carbon and sustainable global economic system".

Interestingly, the report compares the extent of the transformation, which it states "can barely be overestimated", to the Neolithic revolution, namely, the invention and spreading of farming and animal husbandry, and Industrial Revolution. This comparison emphasises the enormity of the challenge we face, which will require a "proactive state, a state that actively sets priorities for this transformation, at the same time increasing the number of ways in which its citizens can participate, and offering the economy choices when it comes to acting with sustainability in mind". Despite actions being taken on climate change, the expert group states "there is a very real danger that the dynamics between change and dogged insistence on the established will lead to a lock-in; the transformation into a low-carbon society could also fail."

Each of our societies faces an unprecedented revolution in production, consumption, mobility, energy and construction, all within the most tight of timeframes. To lead this, a revolution in governance is required with courageous political leadership of a kind we have not seen to date. It must not be afraid to alert society to the realities that face us and must be decisive in facing down powerful vested interests which seek to minimise these realities. President Obama showed the way in a ground-breaking speech he made on climate change on 25 June last. I strongly recommend that members read or view the speech as it is probably the most important speech made by a political leader on the subject. We need similar leadership from the Oireachtas.

I thank Professor Kirby for his presentation and paper. Ireland's economic crisis occurred because powerful capitalist interests played the music while politicians danced a jig. Is there a danger that the dominance of these interests in the western media means they are so powerful that they may prevent a real debate on climate change? Are democratic institutions sufficiently powerful to hold the ring and make a call on climate change that is in the interests of citizens? That is the overall context.

Professor Kirby correctly noted that a number of steps must be taken within a short timeframe. On emissions targets, what is his view on the bottom-up approach under which one asks each sector to produce a plan for carbon reduction? Is it realistic to have such plans? The reason I support the introduction of five year targets is that they would match the term of governments. While I accept that governments do not always last for five years - we had three governments in 18 months at one point - my concern is that longer timeframes could result in us hitting a carbon cliff because a government could decide to kick the can down the road and leave the issue of carbon emissions to its successor. Such an approach would cause the problem to build up and we would hit a carbon cliff at some point. What is Professor Kirby's view? Should emissions targets or carbon budgets be set in five year timeframes?

Professor Kirby cited a report by an advisory body to the German Government. There are different views on achieving change. Some believe one should involve the various stakeholders, while others argue that one should focus on the views of experts. What is Professor Kirby's position? Should we listen to experts such as independent scientists, sociologists and economists who do not have a vested interest in pushing an agenda on behalf of any particular sector and whose interest lies in protecting the environment and humankind?

Moves are afoot in the North to introduce climate change legislation. Is an all-Ireland approach required, particularly given that the two jurisdictions are on one island and climate change clearly will not stop at Hackballscross or Lifford? Should we seek to have some joined up thinking, North and South, on this issue?

The Deputy asked a series of broad questions. He is correct about the challenge to governance. One of the reasons we are in the current crisis is that the previous governance structures failed when faced with very strong actions by certain private economic interests.

Obviously, the same could happen here. That is why I started by emphasising the absolute importance of political leadership. According to the scientists if we fail on this issue we are making the planet uninhabitable for our children and grandchildren. It is that serious.

We have never faced such a serious challenge in human history. President Obama showed last week that we urgently need radical political leadership. By radical, I mean a political leadership that has the courage to tell its citizens what we are facing into and what actions have to be taken. That is the reason I recommend the committee watch President Obama because he did emphasise the challenge of what scientists are telling us. As political leaders and as societies we just have to face the issue. We cannot continue to kick the ball down the road. That is the first thing I would say on the question about vested interests. However, I will add just one point. Of course, there are strong vested interests that are trying to avoid facing the facts but, ultimately, they are you and me, the citizens, who are finding it very hard to face the changes to the privileged lifestyle we have compared to many other people on the globe that this will entail. We cannot just point the finger at big business, we must also point the finger at all our values and lifestyles. Therefore, leadership has to come in terms of how we live our lives.

Deputy Stanley asked three other specific questions, the first of which was on targets. I agree completely with his view that we need much more immediate targets. Five-year targets are not adequate, we need annual targets. This will be a progressive move towards the progressive reduction of greenhouse gases to reach a target within the next 37 years of reduction to about 90%, if we are serious about the issue. We cannot keep putting this off to 2020 and 2030, we have to start now. I strongly recommend that be part of the climate change Bill. We are failing in the challenge if we do not introduce targets, in fact there are no targets in the Bill as it currently stands. I am not only calling for the inclusion of targets but targets much more immediate than for 2020, 2030 and 2050.

In regard to the expert advisory group, I recommend that it be supplemented by a scientific advisory group but not appointed by Government. I suggest that the task be given to the heads of the seven public universities to appoint that group and that the group would share with the Government and the Minister responsible and, ultimately the Taoiseach, who takes responsibility for action on climate change. I suggest that the advisory group be appointed both by the Government but also by the scientific advisory group. The scientific advisory group would advise on the science. Scientific evidence is changing dramatically, almost year by year, and we need to be up to date on how urgently the science is telling us we need to act. We also need a group to advise on policy. That group could include some scientists but the Deputy rightly said it should also include social scientists because this is, ultimately, a social challenge as much as a challenge of hard science and technology. He also mentioned stakeholders. The key stakeholders in society should be represented. Over and above those comments, I would be willing to discuss how best any member thinks this would be constituted. Members know better than I do how the committees of the House operate but it needs to have these different dimensions.

Deputy Stanley also mentioned all-Ireland action. Of course all-Ireland action is needed on this issue as is all-Europe action and global action is needed on this but we cannot continue putting it off to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC. We also have to face the challenges in each of our societies to deal with these issues. We need the global actions that are taking place through the UNFCCC and actions at national and local level because these are also challenges for local governance.

I call Deputy Catherine Murphy.

I believe targets are critical to this legislation. I was disappointed they were not included. Instead sectoral plans were provided and we were told they would constitute our national ambition in this area. We held a meeting with some of the Departments to try and explore the sectoral plans in areas such as agriculture, energy and transport. Following the meeting I was confused as to how these areas dovetail.

It is critically important that the institutional arrangements we put in place are capable of making something more than a document that acts as guidance. In this regard I am interested in what Professor Kirby has said regarding institutional arrangements because it is something we can recommend can be inserted in the Bill to change what is included at present.

Professor Kirby said a low carbon society needs to be given equal weight with a low carbon economy. Perhaps he might elaborate on this. Conflicts arise in this area, even in terms of policy decisions that have been taken. The train has already left the station in that we will not meet our obligations up to 2020. This means that targets extending to 2030 or 2050 will be more difficult to achieve.

Is it possible to disconnect the economy from the targets, given that we probably need a financially more equal society if we are going to deliver on this? Is it suggested that the needs of the economy be ignored in this? For example, reference was made to vested interests. A key area is the national ambition to export agricultural produce, yet this is the area in which we are most challenged. How can this circle be squared, especially in terms of targets?

Reference was made to expertise in regard to the universities, social sciences, Government Departments and so on. I am concerned that the process appears to be internal. If there is to be public engagement and change in attitudes in terms of lifestyle, this process needs to be broader than it is at present. Would Professor Kirby have any suggestions regarding what might be included in the Bill in terms of framing something that would have a broad focus rather than a narrow, expert focus?

I do not know what Deputy Murphy means by the external and internal in her final question.

If we get a group of experts from the universities they will be talking to each other and advising Government. It is all very internal to government whereas the changes required will mean that every one of us will have to change our lifestyles. Can the institutional process have an external component to it that engages with people on an ongoing basis and becomes a vehicle for change in society or is that something that should even be included in the legislation?

The focus on the national advisory group is the top level advice to the Government. The Deputy rightly said that is internal. It is internal to the governance process.

I would see the external part - which is vital - as the actions the Government will take on foot of the advice it gets. We need decisive government action in this regard, to bring to the attention of citizens the huge challenges we face. Citizens must be informed these are challenges facing all of us, but it is important these are not framed as a series of awful threats. There are also opportunities here, for example, to clean up our environment and to live less hectic lives. Of course, this involves change to things we take for granted. I agree the message to society is just as important as the message to government, but it is for the Government to act on that. Whether anything can be included in the Bill in this regard is up to you, the legislators. It seems to me it would be possible to make the point somewhere in the Bill regarding government actions for society. I mentioned in my submission the need to balance a low carbon economy with a low carbon society and I mentioned this precisely for these reasons. This is not just a challenge for restructuring the economy, which it is, but also for how any of us live our lives as citizens. Both these dimensions interact with each other and must be taken into account.

On the sectoral plans, these are an interesting way of advancing. These should go hand in hand with targets and should not be seen as a substitute for them. There is a danger, in light of the NESC report, they might be seen as a substitute. I totally agree that we need an emphasis, in terms of our broad plans, on a society of greater equality. In other words, we need to share the burden equally. There is plenty of research, including Irish research, which indicates that the people who suffer most are the people less able to carry the burden. In other words, the costs of climate change are much higher for poorer sectors of the population than for better off sectors. The equality dimension needs to be built into our planning, but as this is a sociological issue we need the involvement of sociological experts.

The final question related to how we can square the circle in terms of our agricultural production. This is a huge challenge for Ireland. In Ireland there are three major areas where we face enormous challenges - construction, mobility and agriculture. The agriculture area poses the most severe challenge. We need to get the agricultural experts to acknowledge that much of the planning that has gone on for agricultural development in this society, the Horizon 2020 plan in particular, is premised upon increasing emissions. Therefore, there is a clash between two areas of public policy. We need to highlight this and to make planners realise that we are dealing with issues of such gravity that we cannot afford to fluff on them. We need to be consistent and must have agricultural planning that is consistent with the roadmap promised in this legislation to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

I welcome Professor Kirby. He has said the Bill has no targets. However, head 3, which relates to the Kyoto agreement, ties in a 20% reduction on the 2005 figure. Is that not a target?

What I say is that what we do is adopt the EULARINET triple C target, rather than bring in targets of our own. This shows less than the national leadership the NESC report calls for. I agree that it is not that there are no targets in the Bill, but the State does not choose to set its own targets in the Bill. The targets that are set are too distant in the future. We need more immediate targets to lead us, with any success, to meet these longer term targets.

Professor Kirby mentioned earlier that we should adopt a year to year target. In the context of decarbonisation, there is no gradual drop year by year. Policy indicates a higher drop towards the end of a policy rather than a year on year target. Is that correct? Is a year-target not too short?

We are already locked into very high levels of emissions. We need to get wise to the fact that we must start reducing emissions now, with a view to ensuring that over this relatively brief period of 37 years, up to 2050, we meet the swingeing goals of 90% targets. Unfortunately, it seems that in many parts of the world, because we are living through such a severe crisis, many political leaders prefer to postpone action on this in the belief we have the luxury of doing that. However, the scientists tell us we do not.

If the Bill goes through as currently proposed, it will tie us into a target of a 20% reduction by 2020.

As Deputy Murphy has pointed out, we are not going to meet that target.

With regard to the expert advisory board, did Professor Kirby have a chance to look at the fiscal advisory council and its terms of reference? If the expert advisory board was constructed in the same manner as the fiscal advisory council, would that strengthen it? The independence of the Fiscal Advisory Council is recognised in its terms of reference. If the same was the case for the expert advisory board, would that strengthen it adequately? Has Professor Kirby done any comparison between the two?

No I have not, but that is an interesting idea. The fiscal advisory council is appointed by the Government, is it not? My recommendation is the heads of the universities should appoint the expert group of scientists. I say that because it is very important that the leading experts are on the scientific advisory committee, rather than experts the Government would like to see on it.

The Fiscal Advisory Council was appointed by the Government, but it also gives counter advice to it and does not always go along with Government policy. That is the reason I made my suggestion. If the expert advisory board was strengthened along those lines, it would meet with Professor Kirby's proposal.

I totally agree that is the record so far with the fiscal advisory group, so perhaps that would be the result with the expert group. I feel this is such an important issue that we need to build in as many safeguards as possible. Some future government facing these swingeing targets and suffering as a result of them might decide to appoint people to such a group who would offer advice that was a bit more conciliatory. We need the leading scientific advice on this most urgent issue. The Bill needs to reflect a mechanism of nomination of those people that will ensure the advisory group is made up of such leading scientists.

Professor Kirby mentioned in his opening paragraph that conditions written into the outline heads of the Bill may limit the achievements of the proposed decarbonisation. What are the limits written in that impede this?

I quoted from some of them, but I do not have the text in front of me. The heads state the Bill is subservient to goals such as sustainable development, economic impact, securing and safeguarding economic development and competitiveness, taking advantage of economic opportunities, least cost and maximising economic efficiency. I am not arguing that these are not worthy goals, but it seems very short-sighted to build them into law when the most urgent thing we must do is reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. If this costs more than we might like to see it cost, if it interferes with economic efficiency, if it leads to a dent in competitiveness, we must face that. We cannot make the achievement of the goal subservient to these other worthy objectives. The tension here needs to be reflected in a more adequate way. One cannot be subservient to the other and it is not wise to write it into law.

Does Professor Kirby think consideration of economic circumstances should not be written into the legislation? Is he saying that section should be extracted?

That section should not be in the Bill.

Professor Kirby is an expert on this area. If we look at the level of carbon emissions, Ireland is unusual among European countries in regard to our dependency on agriculture. What kind of agricultural industry would we have if we were to achieve a target of 80% reduction in emissions by 2050? There is a sectoral roadmap and emissions in energy and transport are quite low in comparison.

Is Professor Kirby saying that agriculture should be hit by an 80% reduction? He mentioned Food Harvest 2020. They do seem to bang off each other, so to speak.

I am not an expert in agriculture, so I cannot answer the Deputy's question about what form of agriculture we might have by 2050 that could allow us to meet these targets. I was recently reading an account produced by social scientists in Britain about the form of agriculture that would be required to be a low carbon society by 2050. It is a very different form of agriculture. It is much more diversified and much more low scale. It is not so much geared for export as for provisioning at a local level. Those are issues for experts in agricultural production, which I am not. It just seems to me that, at the moment, we are going in the wrong direction in the way we are planning our agriculture.

At the moment, we would have to drop 11 million tonnes from our current output, which is geared for export. Beef and dairy are pasture driven, and Ireland can produce beef and dairy in the most carbon efficient manner in Europe. If we set targets at an individual level rather than at EU level, because we can produce beef and dairy products with a much lower carbon impact, our targets may be very different from those of Germany, but the overall European figure would be the same. Does the Professor see an element of that arising through negotiations?

One of the means by which we can meet our objective is through carbon sequestration, so the extent to which we can find ways - afforestation and so on - of sequestering more of the carbon, or methane in the case of cows, is an issue for experts. The Deputy also seems to be asking me whether I believe we can balance our targets across Europe so that we might be allowed to have higher emissions in agriculture and other countries would have lower emissions. Those are issues for diplomatic negotiation. The European Union is committed to reductions of up to 90% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. That does not allow for much leeway for any sector of the European economy to be emitting any substantial greenhouse gas emissions.

We are committed at this stage to the Kyoto Agreement and a 20% reduction by 2020 in the heads of this Bill. There are further negotiations in 2015, which will likely tie us to a target of a 40% reduction for 2030. Due to what happened after the Second World War, Europe has a real concern about food security. Does it not make sense to negotiate across the European Union as a body, rather than single entities within it?

That is what happens at the moment, but each country ultimately is responsible for meeting national targets within the overall target. After all, under Kyoto we had the right to increase our emissions, whereas other countries had to reduce their emissions. That took into account our levels of development at that time. Whenever a successor to Kyoto is brought into the European Union, Ireland will not be as leniently treated as we were back in the 1990s.

I thank Professor Kirby for his thought provoking presentation. It certainly provides food for thought, no pun intended. Is there a need for balance here in Ireland? We should take into consideration our size as a nation, our impact globally and our ability to produce food. We should look at the global situation, particularly countries in south-east Asia and even eastern Europe that are driving clouds of emissions to the skies on a daily basis, and the significant impact that has when compared with what we have to do. I know we have to play our part, but surely there is a balance so that we do not strangle ourselves with further bureaucratic restrictions and directives on our ability to produce food at a time when half the world is starving. We have to decide whether food security, food safety and the provision of food is more important than the world we live in.

I am interested in Professor Kirby's statement that scientific evidence changes on an ongoing basis. There are scientists who tell us that no matter what we do on climate change, it will have very little effect and that this happens in cycles, be it every hundred years or over centuries. We can get carried away with this and with people like the professor and the so-called experts to whom he refers. I would be interested to know his definition of an expert. We have had experts in the financial sector like Mr. Fingleton or Mr. Dunne in construction. Are these the sort of people to whom the professor refers when he talks about experts? The ordinary people are probably the most educated of all, yet there seems to be no room for their thoughts to be taken into consideration.

I put it to Professor Kirby that the effect we have in Ireland is minuscule, no matter what we do. We can do ourselves damage ultimately. Most speakers have spoken about agriculture. Agriculture is the only industry that has saved this country in times of trouble, because 98% of what we produce in agriculture is exported. We are the closest to organic production of food in the world, because we produce our food in natural conditions. Compare that with the factory farming carried on in places like the Netherlands on the seashore, where animals never see daylight. We have to place more significance on what we have and then look at climate change from a different light. I am concerned to get this balance right. I did not hear Professor Kirby speak about balance today. He is very passionate about what he is proposing. We can work on that, but we should work on it on the basis that it does us least damage, that we are able to reach our food production targets and that we place more emphasis on the people who are starving in the world.

I find this astonishing. In his address last Tuesday, President Obama said that 97% of the world's scientists have reached this remarkable consensus on the serious nature of what we are facing and it is due, by and large, to our human activities on the environment. When I talk about experts, I am talking about hundreds of the world's leading scientists who work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will produce its seventh report later this year. I am not talking about the Michael Fingletons of this world, so let us not minimise the weight of the scientific advice we are getting. The Deputy noted that I said the scientific advice is changing. It is changing because the scientists are learning more and more that the very complex activities of the global climate are changing in worse ways than they predicted as recently as 2007. Things are getting worse at a faster rate than they would have predicted.

I do not know what "balance" means in this planetary emergency, which is what scientists now call it. The idea that we are small contributors takes away from the fact that we have the seventh largest global footprint of the 200 or so countries that exist in the world. We are a major contributor. We are, of course, a small country, so overall we do not contribute an awful lot, but the way in which we produce goods and services and live our lives is at the worst end of what is unsustainable in today's world. If we talk about balance and about giving our agriculture the chance to continue, then we are basically abdicating responsibility. Any country in the world can say this. Every country has its own individual challenges If the Deputy read the report of the World Bank published last November, entitled Turn Down the Heat, he would know that it was about the effect on food supply in the world if the sort of development that is happening is allowed to continue. It is absolutely devastating.

Moreover, it will be devastating within the lifetime of our children. We need to be serious about food security and dealing with the problem of carbon emissions. Calling for balance given this absolutely urgent and immediate situation is simply abdicating responsibility.

Before the vote is called in the Dáil I will call Senators Mac Conghail and Keane together. Senator Mac Conghail will be first and then Senator Keane. Dr. Ó Gallachóir is waiting for us after the suspension.

I will be quick because some of the questions have already been answered. I thank Professor Kirby for his passionate presentation. I enjoyed his last book, written with Mary Murphy. It was very incisive.

I will not go near targets because they are clear, but I wish to pick up on a point Deputy Humphreys made about section 10 under head 5. Professor Kirby would take much of it out. He said it was laudatory and wonderful but his view was that it misses the overall point. I read his submission and I wish to tease out one of his recommendations. It stated that no conditions should be included which appeared to make the achievement or the objectives of the Bill subservient to economic growth and development. That is a rather radical and explosive statement. Will Professor Kirby respond on that? Will he elaborate on his final recommendation? He referred to the need to give equal weight to the achievement of a low carbon society and a low carbon economy. He does not elaborate on that greatly in his submission. Will he address that point, because there is, perhaps, a possibility that this could be included in the Bill?

Cuirim fíorfáilte roimh Professor Peadar Kirby le haghaidh díospóireachta ar cheann de na hábhair is tábhachtaí sa domhain. This is one of the most important subjects we are debating. We have a major challenge and indeed the world has a major challenge and we recognise that. Some of the points I was going to raise have been mentioned already, including the limitations to which Deputy Humphreys referred. We will be grappling with the issue of targets, the footprint, mapping and how we do all of that.

Our decisions will have to be evidence-based and policy-based. I wish to draw the topic out a little. Professor Kirby stated that we need to disconnect the economic section of the Bill. Agricultural production amounts to 7% of our GDP. Realistically, we will not get rid of all the cows in Ireland overnight. As policymakers we are faced with ensuring we have realistic and achievable targets. We would all love to set idealistic targets but I want to get something else from this. I recognise Professor Kirby as an expert in the field. How can we set realistic achievable targets? I am unsure whether Professor Kirby used the word "disconnect" but we need to ensure there is employment in the economic sectors and that we continue to have farmers and so on. As politicians, we need to consider the seriousness of this and recognise what we need to do, but it must be based on evidence and on what is achievable. This is where Professor Kirby comes in. Could he, for example, recommend three things that should be done? He stated that every year we should set a target. The transport sector has been weak here in setting and achieving targets. The heat sector has been very weak as well. We must ensure we work on that sector.

I ask the Senator to conclude because we will be suspending for a vote shortly and I want to allow our witness to respond before then.

Let us get back to the expert. This is what this committee is supposed to be about. We need to hear expert views to ensure we get our information from all sectors of society. We have one of the best expert groups in UCC in Cork. It is developing a mapping system. Dr. Brian Ó Gallachóir will be in next. There is a recognition that there is evidence in Ireland but we need to recognise that, as politicians, we work on evidence that has realistic targets. I could ask the witness a good deal more but, as the Chairman said, we must finish before the vote.

I am somewhat inspired to respond to the discussion between Professor Kirby and Deputy Coonan because it is at the crux of, and impacts on, what we achieve and do not achieve. In a general sense we must answer what Deputy Coonan has said because this is what is on people's minds as a result of all the pressure on them relating to carbon taxes, changing systems and so on. We need to answer their concerns. Senator Keane said that the targets must be achievable and must make sense. They must make sense in a democratic sense as well in that they must be accepted by the people when we try to implement policy.

The urgency and passion with which Professor Kirby speaks indicates that the issue is urgent, but in terms of the western world and the USA, we are fundamentally consumer-driven societies. Until we tackle that, the problems will remain. The consumer sector of our economy is down but we have seen celebrations in the United States because the sector there is up. Where are the people there getting the raw materials from? They are getting them from the places, to which Deputy Coonan referred, where they are sending plumes of carbon into the sky. We buy the stuff. That is what we want and that is what people demand. They feel hard done by if they cannot get another new this, that or the other. I am not trying to denigrate people who are just getting by, but it is hard and it is, as it were, a chip in people now. If we try to change that, we are fundamentally changing what even developing countries want to work towards. They want people to be able to shop until they drop.

The proposals under discussion go beyond setting out that it is raining more here and that we will have difficulty getting food. It is a major ask in terms of the psyche of people, who are simply living from day to day or a few years ahead, to approach things in the way Professor Kirby has called for. Professor Kirby cannot dismiss what Deputy Coonan has said on that basis. This is bigger than agriculture.

If I had the answers to any of these problems then I would have won the Nobel Prize. Deputy Mulherin has stated it exactly. These are the challenges. It is fine to discuss realistic and achievable targets. At the moment our governments are negotiating a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Its purpose is to try to take seriously what the scientists are telling us about the targets we must achieve. Anyone could say these are completely unrealistic or unachievable targets.

Last Tuesday, President Obama pledged the leadership of the United States to ensure that robust targets would be set. Then it becomes the challenge for governments to be able to translate these into the changes required. This is why I said that we need to put an emphasis in the Bill on a low-carbon society, because it is not only the economy that needs to be changed. If we are to take seriously the German experts who have said that this is akin to a transformation similar to the Industrial Revolution or the Neolithic revolution, we must concentre our minds on the fact that the way we do things now is not the way we will be able to do things in 30 or 40 years time.

We will have to go through a revolution in the way in which we produce food. A great deal of emphasis at the meeting has been put on food, and rightly so, but let us we consider the entire structure of Irish agriculture. When I go to Cloughjordan to buy my fruit and vegetables, most are imported. Why can we not re-balance our agriculture such that we produce food for local consumption? The effort to reduce carbon emissions will necessitate far fewer carbon miles in our food and drink production. In other words, we must source more locally. This will immediately change the conditions or incentives for the way in which any of our economic sectors operate, including agriculture. We need to be imaginative, think big and realise that we are truly facing the most swingeing and radical changes. Only by working together can we begin to explore and find answers to them. One of the essential answers must come from those in political leadership. They must not kick the ball down the road. They need to realise that we are facing momentous changes ahead.

Senator Keane, I cut you off before you were finished. We have a couple of minutes remaining. You have some more time for the questions you wanted to ask.

I will just say one word. Agriculture is so important to Ireland. I recall one point of information that we got from the last expert who spoke to us on the beef sector. The carbon footprint of the beef sector in Ireland is the lowest in Europe, along with that of Austria. We must recognise where good is good but we must recognise that the challenge is to educate society as well.

Wind energy is very important because we import 80% of our fossil fuel. Last weekend I organised a conference in Dublin Castle. There was a protest outside the castle which was covered by the media but there was nothing at all about the benefits of wind energy and how we should be educating people and society about the need for a massive change in society. We as politicians have to ensure we bring society around to a different way of thinking. We need to go forward with new methods. To do that we need help from everyone else, including the media and scientists, to get the facts across about what will happen if we do not do something. We must ensure as politicians that we achieve this realistically because we cannot shut down the economy and say we are going to do A, B and C, which may be ideal, if we cannot pay the mortgage. We have to be balanced. I am not saying this because I do not want to do it. I would love to do it in the morning but we have to be realistic.

I have a brief question about the targets. The EU Green Paper suggests a 40% reduction by 2030. I am aware that this is only a proposal and that negotiations do not start until 2015. How does Professor Kirby view that 40%? It cannot be done like a switch. A carbon neutral society will be phased in. Does Professor Kirby regard this as a reasonable target to get us moving along those lines?

Absolutely. If we are saying that we must get down to 90% by 2050, then by 2030 we must be down to 40%. There was some ambition at the time of the Kyoto meeting to make the target for Kyoto 30% rather than 20%. Had we done that we might be closer to where we are going. All of this emphasises the need for much more immediate targets.

That ties in with the Bill because the heads of the Bill tie us into the negotiations. I know Professor Kirby is saying we should have individual targets as a nation but if we are going to tie ourselves into the negotiated targets of 40% after 2015, if that ends up being Ireland's target for 2030 and legally binding through an international agreement, is that a reasonable stepping stone?

Absolutely, but my argument is that we need to show some leadership here, as the NESC has called for, and to be ambitious about the targets we set ourselves, not to be always following international targets.

I agree with Professor Kirby about the annual targets. I was talking specifically about five year budgets in connection with reporting to the Dáil and it being able to make value judgments on what is happening. We are two days away from six and half years from 2020. Where does Professor Kirby think we will be in 2020 if we keep going at the current rate? What are the three big things for which we as Members of the Dáil should push immediately? I recognise that the timeframe is very short. I share Professor Kirby's concerns about the overall analysis of where we are going and the difficulties we face. What are the three things we need to do within the next six to 12 months?

Would Professor Kirby comment on the need for a cumulative approach? Do we have a better chance of reaching the 40% by 2030 if we make the right kind of choices now? It seems to me that some of the things we are doing are going backwards, for example, the reduction in subvention for public transport is influencing the more extensive use of private cars, our population settlement strategy has not changed radically and the pay as you save scheme for the energy sector is at best a pedestrian approach to reaching the point where people take that up in the kind of numbers that are needed. I presume Professor Kirby thinks we would have to make that kind of choice. This is radically different from the choice we might make by getting to 2020 and missing the target and having to buy our way out of this. I presume Professor Kirby and I are on the same page in regard to that kind of approach.

That is where we are going now. We are not going to meet our Kyoto targets by 2020 and we will have to buy credits to be able to meet them. We are failing on that score. Deputy Stanley asked me for three big things. The first big thing, and I am asking for it here, is that responsibility for climate change be given to the Taoiseach. That is essential because it signals that this is central to Government policy. That will have to happen internationally with whatever is the successor treaty to Kyoto. There would have to be a unit established for poverty proofing or equality proofing policies. We have to climate change proof policies. As Deputy Murphy says, there are many contradictions in the incentives that we are setting, and climate change objectives do not seem to be getting the importance they warrant. Those are two things. We need much more leadership from public figures, including ourselves as academics. We need to talk much more about this. The media has been a great failure in this regard too. We need leadership at all levels in society to educate our population. I was shocked that I did not see any mention in the Irish media of President Obama's climate change talk in Georgetown University on Tuesday of last week, despite it being probably the single most important speech by a political leader anywhere in the world on the issue. It is really is worth watching. We need to wise up our media and all our sectoral organisations, such as the employers' and farmers' organisations. They might not like some of this stuff but this is what is coming down the road and the future of our children and our children's children depends on the actions we take now. It is that serious. Let us develop a co-operative spirit. In wartime we have the capacity to develop a co-operative spirit to get through a period where our survival is at stake, and that is akin to what we are facing into. Government needs to put itself on that sort of footing.

Cuireann sin deireadh leis an seisiún seo. Ba mhaith liom ár mbuíochas a ghabháil leis an Ollamh Kirby as an gcúnamh a thug sé dúinn inniu. Is dóigh liom gur fear ó iar-Chorcaigh é. Is rud maith é sin. On behalf of the committee, I thank Professor Kirby most sincerely for his very passionate engagement.

The vote is imminent so I propose that we break now and come back after the vote because if we bring Dr. Brian Ó Gallachóir in now, the bells will go midway during his presentation or at least during the first question. With the committee's agreement I propose that we suspend now and go into the House for the vote. Is that agreed? Agreed.