Brendan Howlin
Question:15 Mr. Howlin asked the Minister for the Environment the initiatives taken to date by the Irish Government following the UNCED conference in Rio de Janeiro; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - UNCED Rio Conference.
Michael Creed
Question:56 Mr. Creed asked the Minister for the Environment the resolutions, if any, of the UN Conference on the Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, which require action by the Government in order to implement them.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 15 and 56 together.
I refer to the full statement on the outcome of UNCED which the Taoiseach made in reply to questions on 23 June and to the reply by the Minister for the Environment to Questions Nos. 20, 22, 28, 33 and 265 of the same date.
The Environment Action Programme will be the main vehicle for implementing the environment aspects of Agenda 21. My Department are finalising the second review of this action programme and particular account will be taken of the UNCED dimension. This policy review, together with the major organisational initiative of the Environmental Protection Agency, will support some of the key objectives of UNCED, in particular that of sustainable development. Adoption and implementation of the European Community's Fifth Environmental Action Programme will also assist this process.
My Department are completing a national CO2 strategy in consultation with other interested Departments. This will form part of the wider EC strategy directed at ratification and implementation of the Climate Change Convention by the Community and its member states.
The Wildlife Service of the Office of Public Works are responsible for the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Department of Foreign Affairs are pursuing implementation of the financial commitments arising from UNCED. The overall response to UNCED will involve action by a range of other Government Departments and public bodies as well as by the non-governmental and private sectors.
Will the Minister agree that, while certain decisions were taken at the Rio conference on a global basis, local authorities normally are the bodies which are responsible for the implementation of such decisions? Does the Minister have any plans in her Department to ensure that local authorities are given the necessary finance to carry out such programmes, bearing in mind that their staffing — particularly outdoors — has been decimated over the last few years?
Obviously everybody is looking for more money, particularly as far as environmental matters are concerned. We cannot separate the issue of local authority finances from the overall position in relation to local authority financing; this is the subject of a later question. I am a member of the Government sub-committee on this issue and we are discussing the future of local authority financing.
Obviously it is my wish that local authorities will always be in a position to fund the environmental matters required of them and, in that regard, they will have to find more imaginative ways to do so through the involvement of the private sector in some instances and through local charges and levies in others where they do not apply at present, towards the implementation of some environmental objectives which we all demand. There is no easy way of cleaning up the environment. It requires to be paid for which can only be done by borrowing the money, raising it through central taxation or by local charges for particular services. Obviously we need a combination of central taxation and charges at local level as well as any moneys which might be forthcoming from European sources.
In the context of the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty, I hope additional moneys through the Cohesion Fund will be made available for environmental projects in the four poorer regions of the Community which include Ireland. That should greatly help some of the major infrastructural work which has to be done on water treatment.
I wish to remind the Minister that none of the undertakings given in Rio is conditional on our having access to the Cohesion Fund. I invite the Minister of State to be more specific in relation to particular undertakings which were included in the Rio declaration. For example, and I quote, "States should effectively co-operate——
I am sorry, Deputy Dukes, but quotations at Question Time are not to be encouraged, if not out of order.
I am sorry, a Cheann Comhairle, I shall paraphrase. There are two statements in the declaration dealing with the discouragement or prevention of the relocation and transfer of substances that could cause severe environmental degradation and a reference to the internationalisation of environmental costs which clearly relate to situations such as those with which we are coming into contact, and into conflict, in Sellafield for example. The declaration states clearly that states undertake to protect the environment by adopting the precautionary approach.
What action has been taken to implement those two parts of the declaration that can be related directly and specifically to Sellafield, and what remedial action do the Government propose to take now, having thrown out the precautionary principle in the Environmental Protection Agency, to give effect to it as required by the declaration of the Rio conference.
First, it is not true that the Government threw out the precautionary principle. The agency is required, as one of the six requirements in their licensing operations, to take into account the precautionary principle. As I said in my comments on the Environmental Protection Agency, if we were to be really precautionary — and this is a widely used concept in the environmental area and is something to which I have given a lot of thought — virtually nothing would happen because almost all of man's activities——
Then why did we sign the declaration?
Please, Deputy, let us hear the Minister's reply.
I shall deal with that aspect in a moment; almost all of man's activities, our sheer existence, place pressures on the environment; if we were to be really precautionary we probably would not exist at all.
I now turn to this country's obligations under UNCED. Obviously Agenda 21 is the main action agenda which requires us to achieve sustainable development. The Environmental Protection Agency and the environmental action plan are part of the process to be used here towards achieving that.
There is a long agenda on water pollution, sewage treatment and so on that will require the expenditure of substantial moneys, to which I referred in reply to the previous question. Under the two conventions we signed, Ireland will make resources available. For example, the European Community committed itself to three billion ECU towards Agenda 21 and the Taoiseach has already said in the House that Ireland will make a contribution of about £7 million over a two to three year period.
The main consequences of the Rio conference are that the world's population is projected to increase by 100 million each year during the nineties; we are losing a third of the land affecting 850 million people——
Those are not consequences, they are causes.
——we are required to redeploy resources from the developed countries to the less developed countries — that matter was discussed in the House last week in the context of Overseas Development Aid — and this country has to play its part in that process, a greater part than it played in recent years.
That is putting it mildly.
We have to make a bigger contribution towards alleviating the kind of poverty that puts huge pressure on less developed countries in terms of human need and the environment. It is not true to say, as Deputy Dukes does, that we have already fallen down on this. The United Nations General Assembly next month will discuss the implementation of Agenda 21 and the UNCED conclusions, and will establish the sustainable development commission. Ireland will play its part in that context particularly through membership of the European Community. Most of what has to be done in relation to UNCED will be done in a European-wide context. While the limit on greenhouse gases and the bio-diversity convention must be dealt with locally and on a national basis, we have also agreed to implement many of these issues in a European-wide context, which is what we will be doing.
Sellafield and toxic waste?
We can shout all we like to the British about closing down Sellafield, and we have been very good at that——
We signed a declaration. What are we doing about it?
We did not sign a declaration to say we would close Sellafield because we do not have any power to do that.
The Government did. I shall read it out for the Minister.
Question Time should proceed in an orderly fashion.
"States should effectively co-operate to discourage or prevent the relocation and transfer to other States of any activities and substances that cause severe environmental degradation or are found to be harmful to human health." It is there in the declaration.
Deputy Dukes, I have already said that quotations at Question Time are not in order.
It is the wish of the Government and of every party in the House to see the Sellafield operation closed down. Much as that is our wish, we will not be successful by simply calling on another authority to close it down. We have to ensure two things: first, that we have an effective policing regime at European Community level, which is why the Minister for Energy has been striving to have a European-wide inspectorate established, to inspect and monitor Sellafield and other nuclear power stations and, second, I would like to see an environmental impact assessment carried out on the proposed new developments at Sellafield.
What happened to all the neat solutions the Minister had in 1986?
Please, this cannot continue. I am calling Question No. 16, in the name of Deputy Brian O'Shea.
They scoffed at an EC inspectorate then.