Shooting cattle would be one of the cheapest and most efficient ways of helping to reduce Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions, according to a leading environmental lawyer.
Prof Yvonne Scannell, of Trinity College Dublin, told an IBEC environmental conference yesterday she did not believe the Government was serious about cutting the size of the national herd of about 11 million over the next 10 years.
The recently published National Climate Change Strategy calls for a 10 per cent reduction in cattle numbers, or equivalent measures by the farming sector, as cows emit large quantities of methane.
"If killing cows is a way to deal with this, then that's what we should do," Prof Scannell said, adding it would also be cheaper than other options. She pointed out demand for beef had declined because of public fears about BSE.
She warned the strategy to cap the increase in Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions at 13 per cent by 2010 would fail unless public transport, agriculture and energy were tackled.
Calling for tighter restrictions on the rights of third parties in the planning process, she said objections to major developments were "getting out of control". One way of doing this would be to award costs against the losing side in planning appeals.
Though the Environmental Protection Agency's implementation of integrated pollution control licensing for industry had been "a great success", she believed local politicians had their heads in the sand in dealing with waste plans.
Prof Scannell said Irish environmental legislation was often "complex and incomprehensible". The development plans of many local authorities were also "out of date and anachronistic", she added.
She suggested the real reason some politicians were "taking brown envelopes" was that planners had not zoned sufficient land for development and the system "did not like landowners and developers making profits from rezoning".
Dr Mary Kelly, environmental director of IBEC, said reducing greenhouse gas emissions was "the biggest challenge facing Ireland in environmental terms". Even though The Hague summit had collapsed, the strategy "still needs to be implemented". However, she said any move towards "eco-taxes" as part of a general "greening" of the tax system here needed to be examined.
IBEC's position on this issue was that a carbon tax, for example, could affect the competitiveness of Irish industry.
Dr Owen Wilson, chief scientific officer of the ESB, said Ireland needed to develop an emissions trading system which would put a "market-driven cost" on all carbon dioxide emissions and a consequent value on ways of reducing the overall volume of emissions.
Mr Mathieu Korten, of the Dutch Confederation of Industry, said his government had 30 "negotiated agreements" with major players in the industrial sector to reduce emissions by achieving an 18.5 per cent increase in energy efficiency.