With the Greenland ice-sheet melting three times faster than it was 10 years ago, Minister for the Environment Dick Roche has been accused of "sleepwalking Ireland's environment into a disaster" by failing to curb our greenhouse gas emissions.
Gerry McCaughey, chief executive of timber-frame home builders Kingspan Century, said it "beggars belief that the Government is still protecting the single biggest producer of carbon dioxide (CO2) - the concrete industry - at the expense of the environment".
Figures released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday showed that the concrete industry's emissions increased by nearly 20 per cent in 2004, mainly due to the boom in construction.
Overall emissions for the year were 0.45 per cent higher than in 2003.
Mr McCaughey said a 7 per cent increase in C02 emissions from the residential sector showed that the Department of the Environment "isn't doing enough to encourage and promote energy-efficient modern methods of construction" of new housing, despite its record output.
Bernard Durkan, Fine Gael spokesman on natural resources, called on the Government to adopt his party's proposed energy conservation and insulation measures to reduce home heating costs and domestic CO2 emissions by up to 26 per cent.
In his statement on the EPA figures, which showed that Ireland's emissions in 2004 were 23.5 per cent higher than in 1990, the Minister noted reductions in some sectors, saying these showed emissions had been "fully decoupled from economic growth".
But Oisín Coghlan of Friends of the Earth said: "The only person I know who considers such decoupling a measure of real progress in the fight against climate change is George Bush. We have to reduce actual emissions, not just the rate at which they are increasing."
The latest figures "demonstrate the challenge we face" in complying with the Kyoto Protocol, he said, adding that climate change and energy policy "are going to dominate our public agenda in years ahead in the way unemployment and emigration did in years gone by".
Mr Roche said further measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions would be contained in a consultation document to be published shortly.
This would show how Ireland could meet its Kyoto target to cap the rise in its emissions at 13 per cent of their 1990 levels by 2012.
Eamon Gilmore TD, Labour's environment spokesman, said it was clear that the current climate change strategy had failed.
"Emissions generated by transport are up a massive 6 per cent. We have the Government's inability to tackle gridlock to thank for that as well."
Green Party spokesman Ciarán Cuffe TD said reducing emissions from transport and the building sector "does not require us to reinvent the wheel".
It would mean investing more in public transport as well as ensuring that all new buildings are built to the highest standards.
Pat Finnegan of Grian (Greenhouse Ireland Action Network) called again for the establishment of a "multi-stakeholder" National Commission on Climate Change to inform policy and get Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions back on track to meet the Kyoto target, instead of allowing them to rise "resolutely upward".
