Cabinet committee to meet on findings by EPA

The Government's proposed climate change subcommittee, chaired by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, is to hold its first meeting in two weeks' time.

The meeting will consider yesterday's Environmental Protection Agency EPA) report which found Ireland was heating up due to global warming at about twice the average rate of the rest of the planet.

The committee is to oversee measures to achieve the Government target to reduce Ireland's CO2 emissions by 3 per cent a year over the next five years.

While the Government has not yet announced the complete nominations for the committee it is expected to include Ministers John Gormley (environment), Noel Dempsey (transport), Brian Cowen (finance) and Eamon Ryan (energy).

Strategies expected to be considered include incentives to use renewable energies, greater energy conservation in building regulations and rebalancing vehicle registration tax towards environmentally friendly vehicles. A new commission on climate change, which will advise the cabinet subcommittee, may also be set up.

From next year a scheme will be put in place to offset carbon emissions created by travel on the part of Government Ministers and officials. Offsetting is usually accomplished by sponsoring the planting of trees which act as carbon "sinks", taking carbon out of the atmosphere.

The next budget was described by Mr Gormley yesterday as "the first carbon budget".

Speaking at the launch of the EPA's report, Key Meteorological Indicators of Climate Change in Ireland, Mr Gormley said the evidence for climate change was there for anyone to see.

He said anyone over 40 years of age would remember the mornings when kettles of hot water would be needed to defrost car windscreens, and times when children poured water on the ground to create a slide for the next day.

But, as the EPA report found, minimum winter temperatures had been rising particularly over the last 20 years, resulting in fewer freezing conditions and a shorter "frost period". "My children don't know what I am taking about," he said.

Mr Gormley said he had met the Taoiseach on Tuesday on the issue of climate change. He said the Taoiseach's experience of holidaying in Kerry this year "when he said it was coming down in buckets" had impressed upon him the urgency of getting the Government's committee under way.

"The committee will have its first meeting in about two weeks' time," he said, adding that the Taoiseach had also asked him to represent Ireland at a heads of state meeting of the United Nations in two weeks' time.

He also hoped the Government would announce an "offsetting plan" which would equate good environmental measures with bad ones, in 2008.

Mr Gormley said the importance of the EPA report was that it demonstrated for all to see that climate change was a real, tangible thing.

He remembered being interviewed on radio 17 years ago, "when [ presenter] Gay Byrne had warned listeners to prepare to be bored to tears. He said 'I am going to talk to John Gormley an environmentalist about climate change'." But now the EPA report had set out "in a tangible way that we have a problem in this country".

Calling for a "paradigm shift" to deal with climate change, he said people now believed it was happening and the evidence was there for all.