Greens reject criticism over carbon emission targets

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has rejected Government claims that his party set over-ambitious 2020 carbon emission targets for Ireland while in office.

Mr Ryan said the Government’s lack of ambition on climate change was in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.

It was disappointing that the Minister for Energy was “pointing the finger at the Green Party instead of getting on with the job at hand”, he said.

The last Government “spent five years arguing they could not do anything about the problem and in time they came to believe their own propaganda”.

In the Dáil this week Minister for Energy Denis Naughten said Ireland's targets agreed when the Green Party was in office had to be renegotiated for more realistic goals.

The issue was raised after the European Commission announcement on Wednesday of detailed calculations for specific emissions targets for member states, in which Ireland received significant concessions.

Mr Ryan had claimed that the Government wanted “to turn this green country brown” and that it had used all its political capital in Europe to “get Ireland off the hook” of meeting its climate change commitments.

But Mr Naughten said the renegotiated 2030 targets were “realistic and achievable” and based on detailed evidence that was submitted. A lot of that work had been done by UCC.

“The difficulty was in relation to the 2020 targets as was openly admitted by the Commission that the evidence was not as forthcoming as it was in relation to our 2030 targets,” the Minister added.

He reminded Mr Ryan that the Greens had negotiated the 2020 targets. The “baselines and targets that were used left us in a position that was always going to be unachievable to reach and what we now have are targets that are achievable and can be reached.”

However in a statement the Green Party leader said Ireland was “one of only two countries in the EU that will miss our 2020 targets, and we are one of the only countries pleading for special treatment with respect to the 2030 targets.

“Fine Gael has consistently put emissions reductions on the long finger - it is ridiculous to blame the Green Party in this instance.”

Mr Ryan insisted that Ireland had been on course to meet its 2020 emissions reduction targets when we left Government in 2011. “Emissions were falling across the board, even taking into account reductions due to weaker economic activity. The issue is not that the 2020 targets were too ambitious - the problem is that the Fine Gael/Labour Government massively scaled back action on emissions in the last five years.”

He said that when the Greens left government Metro North was fully funded and ready to go.

“Fine Gael cancelled the project, which would be close to completion by now if started as planned, and set it back a decade.”

Mr Ryan said “the number of homes retrofitted for energy efficiency fell through the floor under the last Government”.

He added that “21,600 homes were upgraded for energy efficiency last year, versus 67,500 in 2011. The Green Party introduced the massively popular “Bike to Work Scheme”, which saw an 82 per cent increase in the number of bicycle journeys between 2006 and 2011.

“We introduced carbon budgeting, which integrated climate considerations into budgetary policy. This was removed by Fine Gael who have extended the life of peat fired power stations was extended by 15 years, against all the best climate advice.”