Reaction: The Green Party has attacked the Government's record on climate change and accused the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, of "passive indifference" to the problem. Mr Roche last night rejected the indifference charge and said the Government acknowledged that there was a big problem and was taking measures to address it.
Responding to the Stern report presented to the British government yesterday, which advocated a range of green taxes, the Minister said he did not believe it would come to that in Ireland, if the policy being pursued by the Government was implemented.
Dan Boyle TD, Green Party spokesman on finance, insisted that none of the Irish political parties, with the exception of the Greens, seemed to have grasped the scale of the response that was required to deal with the problem. Far more than simply managing current economic policies was needed.
"We need a radically different approach to prevent ourselves from sleepwalking into an uncertain future. The challenge for all other Irish political parties, and whoever is to form the next government, is to properly inform themselves of this debate and properly contribute to it," said Mr Boyle.
"Nicholas Stern, a former vice-president of the World Bank, has performed a huge service with this report, highlighting that by following a business-as-usual approach in ignoring the environmental consequences of climate change, the world economy could itself be tipped into recession, diminishing in value at a likely cost of over five trillion euro.
"This report is valuable in highlighting not only the probable economic costs of failing to act on climate change, but also stresses the economic opportunities that would exist if we started taking effective, collective action on climate change now," he added. Mr Boyle said that in Ireland these threats and the opportunities could be even be more marked because of the open nature of our economy.