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Dáil Éireann debate -
Friday, 30 Apr 1993

Green 2000 Report: Statements.

The Green 2000 Advisory Group was established in July 1991, by my predecessor as Taoiseach, Mr. Haughey, to review the key issues facing the natural environment and to identify policies and strategies which should be adopted to protect and enhance the natural environment. The advisory group gave particular attention to the environmental consequences in Ireland of the changes in the EC Common Agriculture Policy.

The report contains 15 general recommendations and 137 specific recommendations which have been drawn from 11 technical reports concerning agriculture, aquaculture, energy generation, exractive industries, inland fisheries, forestry, manufacturing industry, nature conservation, protected landscapes, tourism, and transport infrastructure. There is also a chapter entitled "Towards a Strategy for Sustainable Development".

The focus of the report is essentially on the natural environment in accordance with the group's terms of reference. Consideration was not given to the marine environment, apart from the subject of aquaculture, as it was considered outside the group's terms of reference.

I would like to take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of the work of the members of the group who gave generously of their valuable time to produce an excellent report. The group was chaired by my Environmental Adviser, Dr. David Cabot.

In opening this debate I will confine myself to general issues, because during the day Ministers with specific responsibilities relating to sections of the Green 2000 report will be addressing the House.

Having examined the state of the environment Green 2000 concluded that some improvement has occurred in certain areas; e.g. reduction of the extent of serious fresh water pollution; improvement on air quality in Dublin; the protection of some natural habitats; improvement of some bathing waters and increased public awareness. The natural environment has shown steady deterioration in some key areas for example, increase in moderately polluted river length; decline in lake water quality; increase in ground water contamination in certain areas; loss of natural habitats and species diversity, and reduction in landscape quality.

Green 2000 proposed that our minimum objective must be to arrest any further deterioration of the natural environment. Our target must be an unspoilt, unpolluted environment, in which diversity of flora and fauna is sustained. This is desirable for not only philosophical reasons but vital also for Ireland's social and economic success. Ireland's future economic development must be sustainable, which means improving the quality of human life, while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems. A sustainable economy is the product of sustainable development. It maintains its natural resource base. It can continue to develop by adaptation, and through improvements in knowledge, organisation, technical efficiency and wisdom.

Preoccupation with economic growth has tended to disturb our harmony with nature, although the two objectives do not have to be in opposition to each other. On a global scale, we have a frightening depletion in the ozone layer, which filters harmful ultra violet rays, not only confined to the polar regions but now extending over the mid latitudes of the Northern hemisphere. Global warming is another serious threat to our environment. Between now and 2030, it has been estimated that on a continuation of present trends, there could be a substantial increase in man-made greenhouse gas emissions, which could result in a rise of the mean sea level around our coast of somewhere between 9-18cm. While agricultural production in Ireland would generally benefit from global warming with an expected increase of 20 per cent in the national yield of grass, approximately 2.5 per cent of the Republic's coastline would be at risk from the sea level rise.

Through our combined individual, national, regional and international actions, we are threatening the living fabric of our planet. Until recently, much of this destruction was carried out unwittingly, unevenly and with accelerating intensity. Today, we have the knowledge and technology to correct these problems.

We have a duty as politicians to resolve these problems at local, national and international levels. Last June, at the historic United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, I signed two important international conventions on behalf of Ireland — the climate change and biodiversity conventions. We are actively pursuing ratification of both alongside our EC partners. At Rio, the United States' position with regard to both initiatives was less advanced on the basis that it might be too expensive on industry to set strict limits on the discharge of ‘greenhouse' gases, and that the biodiversity convention would impose unfair penalties on US biotechnical and pharmaceutical companies in Third World countries. Last week, President Clinton reversed the US stance and committed the United States to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to their 1990 levels by the year 2000. This will be in line with the consensus developing in Europe to work towards the introduction of a carbon tax.

Our Programme for Government has made very clear our commitment to the protection and enhancement of the environment. The programme incorporates and builds upon the £1 billion Environment Action Programme 1990-2000 launched in January, 1990. One of the principal tasks of the new Cohesion fund, which I negotiated at Edinburgh, is to fund investment in improving the quality of the environment. The Green 2000 report has re-emphasised several important principles, and has put forward important proposals which will improve our environmental standing within the European Community.

With regard to the general recommendations of the Green 2000 report, I would like to make it clear that I accept the following: (1) as a minimum objective any further deterioration of our natural environment must be arrested; (2) environmental protection considerations must be fully integrated in all policy areas and at all levels of implementation by Government; (3) maintenance of Ireland's high quality environment is a key ingredient in allowing the economy to develop and generate high quality jobs now and in the future; (4) the underlying theme for the next round of Structural/Cohesion and other EC funds should be to maximise our potential in having the highest quality environment within the European Community; (5) the National Development Plan should build upon the Government's environment action programme and be based on principles of sustainable development, precautionary action and integration of environmental considerations in all policy areas; (6)increased priority must be accorded to the integrated conservation of landscape and natural habitats; maximum use must be made of the environmental provision of the Common Agricultural Policy reforms; planning policies must be more rigorously implemented and their scope widened in a positive and creative manner, particularly in areas of high landscape quality; (7)information on key natural features and landscapes needs to be reviewed and updated and policy for these areas must be designed to encourage and facilitate land owners and public and private development interests to protect these endowments; (8)economic instruments in which tax and grant provisions are designed to protect and enhance the natural environment should be an integral component of environmental and fiscal policies; (9)we will examine the operation of environmental impact assessment procedures and whether they need to be improved by the provision of further guidelines for assessment, the Government are now ensuring that public as well as private projects are subject to the same scrutiny; (10)there should be improved systematic and comprehensive data collection on all aspects of the natural environment; great access to this data by the general public and increased transparency concerning all decisions which affect the natural environment; (11)research to support sound decision making with regard to the management of the natural environment needs to be properly funded, and the findings need to be fully considered in such decision making; (12)comprehensive waste legislation and a national waste strategy are both urgently being worked on, in order to encourage waste minimisation, including clean production, and greater recycling; (13)much can be achieved through more effective implementation and enforcement of our existing environmental legislation; and (14)we will consider the need for a specialist group to examine the management of the marine environment.

I would like to discuss why we need to view the environment as a strategic resource, a core element in our strategy to address the challenges of maintaining and creating employment.

Our location, diseconomies of scale, and the openness of our labour market have contributed to relatively high costs in our economy, in a situation where our labour force is still growing as the competition in all markets intensifies. How can environmental policy be structured to help expand our capacity to contribute to economic activity and employment creation?

The Green 2000 report estimates that there are at the moment approximately 155,000 jobs significantly dependent on a high quality environment in the dairy and meat processing sector, tourism, chemicals/pharmaceuticals, electronics, aquaculture and forestry sectors. In addition, a substantial proportion of total employment remains on the land. Continued success in farming is dependent upon the maintenance of a high quality and healthy environment. It is clear that if significant environmental degradation occurs there will be a resultant loss of existing employment in our natural resource-based activities.

The Culliton report clearly identified the potential for producing quality agricultural products. That report stated "of all the opportunities which may become available to Irish agriculture in the 1990s and beyond, those based on health and environmental factors are probably the most significant". We know from market research that a green friendly premium on agricultural products is worth approximately 10 per cent of the final product price. For Irish food exports this could amount to £200 million per annum.

There is considerable potential in increasing our tourism industry based on our outstanding environmental quality. Every effort must be made to maintain and improve that quality, which is easily Ireland's biggest attraction. Manufacturing and services sectors relating to the environment have been identified as key growth sectors in the future. For example, the European market for environmental control products and services is worth £40 billion and is growing at 7.5 per cent per annum; the markets for waste disposal technologies are expected to more than double within the next seven years. Information technologies markets related to the environment are projected to grow at between 11 per cent and 15 per cent per annum up to the year 2000.

I have always been convinced that there is a huge role for environmentally based technology. We have to break the link between growth in the economy and damage to the environment. Energy policy is a critical factor in all of this. We need to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. There will soon be a compelling reason to do so, as most EC countries are now supporting the introduction of a carbon tax. The application of new gasification technology, combined heat and power and other alternative energy sources, as well as more effective energy conservation must be actively pursued.

Advanced countries are already succeeding in breaking the link between economic growth and damage to the environment. At the Earth Summit in Rio last June, a global environment facility of $5 billion was set up as an instrument to fund environmental improvements in developing countries, including new emission reduction technologies. The Government would gladly support applications by Irish companies to participate in suitable international projects, some of which enjoy up to 100 per cent grant funding. We can, through the commercial sector, private and public, make a contribution not merely to improving our own environment, but become actively involved in improving the global environment.

The policies and strategies which have been proposed by the Green 2000 advisory group have been designed to protect and enhance our natural environment. They also provide a sound basis for building a strategy for sustainable development. A high quality environment is an essential part of our cultural identity and provides us with a strong competitive advantage within a European context. We must cherish our environment and manage it with respect, sensitivity, and imagination, in accordance with our national and international responsibilities.

I sought this debate, and in particular that the Taoiseach should open it, because it is important that in matters concerning the environment we should be seen to be planning ahead. We should not find ourselves in the position of having to react to accidents after they happen. Environmental accidents do not just happen, they occur because those in charge have failed to make the appropriate plans in time. The purpose of a debate like this is to enable this House to plan to avoid what might otherwise be serious consequences from an environmental accident.

There are four major areas that I would like to focus on. The first is the revelation in the report that in order to comply with our existing environmental requirements under the Sofia and Helsinki Protocols, the ESB will have to increase electricity prices by a minimum of 3 per cent to consumers. There has been no information from the Government as to when this increase in electricity prices will occur or as to which consumers will have to pay it. At the moment ordinary consumers are paying far more for electricity than are privileged customers of the ESB who have agreements to supply electricity to them at very low prices, almost below the cost of production. Some of our gas, which could be used to supply electricity to ordinary consumers at more competitive prices without environmental damage, is supplied to industries at a price that is again extremely low. If we are facing a 3 per cent increase in overall electricity prices it is very important that the privileged status of some consumers be re-examined so that ordinary householders do not have to pay an excessively high price for necessary environmental works. That refers only to the works necessary to meet existing commitments under the Helsinki and Sofia Protocols.

Further increases in electricity prices may be necessary because, as this report tells us, the ESB will have to spend £840 million if it is to meet best available technology standards which may become mandatory from the European Community in respect of emissions of CO² gases, and that represents a further increase ultimately in the price of electricity for Irish consumers. We need to know who is going to pay this and what effect it will have on the economic development of this country.

The second point we need to concern ourselves with relates to the evidence in this report that there is no plan going on a comprehensive national basis in regard to the maintenance of the equality of ground water supplies in this country, supplies drawn essentially from wells. Seventy per cent or more of the water used in this country is surface water drawn from rivers and approximately 30 per cent comes from wells. There are approximately 11 nuclear stations on the west coast of Britain where there could be an accident, and in the event of such an accident surface water would be affected by radiation and would not be available for safe use to consumers. The only water that would be available for safe use in the event of a raditation accident affecting water supplies generally would be ground water, that is, water from wells, because it is insulated. In the meantime, because of the dumping of waste in our country, landfills being used by county councils, lethal material is being leaked into the ground water supply. Septic tanks are leaking lethal material into the ground water supply. We have no legislation concering the disposal of hazardous waste, and hazardous waste is being stored in a number of places where it is seriously affecting the quality of the ground water supply. We are told in the Dáil that of the hazardous waste produced here 20 per cent is exported and I believe approximately 10 per cent is destroyed here. What happens to the remaining 70 per cent? We do not know. Where is it going? Is it affecting our water supplies?

Water is more important than oil in regard to the long term preservation of resources in the world at large. With the increase in population huge numbers of the people do not have adequate water supplies available to them. A total of one billion people in the Third World live without access to clean water. Approximately 1.7 billion people in the Third World lack proper sanitary facilities. The world population is set to double in the next 40 years. The demand that that will place on clean water supplies will be enormous. It behoves those countries which still have substantial clean water supplies as we do, to ensure they are adequately protected. We do not have the information to do that at the present time. It is only now that a geological survey is beginning to undertake a mapping of the aquifers which supply ground water to us. There is no legal control of the extraction of ground water from wells to ensure that it is not excessively drawn down for wasteful use. Many local authority dumps are not properly insulated and are directly passing lethal material into the ground water.

Another interesting finding of this report which I wish to highlight is that it shows our system of Government here is entirely unsuited to preserving the environment. The report says:

Government departments are highly centralised, with most substantive decision-making concentrated at the centre. This [latter] tendency is a function of many forces, but perhaps the most compelling is the fact that the Minister is regarded as having responsibility for all the decisions, however insignificant, by his or her Department. For many functions, this quality of centralised self containment may be appropriate, but for the achievement of effective environmental management, it is entirely inappropriate.

Our entire system of Government is inappropriate for dealing with environmental issues because it is so centralised. As a result of that we depend on this House to take the necessary measures. There is a log jam of legislation in this House. I have already adverted to the fact that we do not have proper waste control legislation.

The report has also highlighted the fact that we have no legislation to provide for preservation of heritage in particular areas. Any action that has been taken in that regard by the Office of Public Works has been without legal backing. We have no legislation governing national parks and any action that has been taken to provide for national parks has no legal backing and is open to challenge. We have no planning legislation covering the distribution of houses nationally so as to ensure that energy is conserved to the maximum extent. For example, combined heat and power is not possible in most parts of our cities becuse of our house planning. There is no legislation to ensure that we plan the distribution of population in such a way that energy is conserved in the most effective way possible.

In addition the State exempts itself from the environmental controls it applies to others. The Office of Public Works, which is supposed to be the leading body in terms of the preservation of the environment, is exempt from the normal planning laws that other bodies must adhere to, which is a scandal. Is that not a case of giving the worst possible example?

Bord na Móna, a State company, is exempt from the water pollution rules that apply to all other land users including farmers and foresters. They are subject to the water pollution Acts but Bord na Móna, because it is owned by the State, is exempt. Therefore, we have a situation where the State suits itself and centralises decision-making and, as a result, decisions are not taken in time to protect the environment.

We are also engaging on a massive afforestation programme where we will move from having 1 per cent of our land mass covered by forestry at the beginning of this century to 10 per cent at the end of the century. That is welcome and will certainly help to reduce CO² output into the environment but it is taking place without any research as to the effects, social and environmental, of forestry. We have little or no information or indigenous research capacity as far as forestry is concerned because the responsibility for research in this area lies with a company that is engaged in forestry. Obviously, it does not have the independence of judgment to ensure that we pursue the proper standards because it is involved as a party in tree planting. We are undertaking a great change in our use of land, transferring large tracts of land to forestry without any proper research to ensure that it is done in the appropriate manner.

We are also undertaking a change in agricultural policy which is not environmentally friendly. I believe we could make much more progress in reducing agricultural surpluses without creating dependency in rural Ireland or requiring people to overstock certain land with sheep, which leads to soil erosion, in order to qualify for income supports. The system of agricultural support must change to give support to the farmers rater than to the animals. If we were to tax surplus supplies, fertiliser and seed inputs, it would penalise factory farming in Europe rather than the type of farming in respect of which Ireland has a comparative advantage. We need to reappraise radically the agricultural policy contained in the MacSharry package because I do not believe it represents the best approach to environmental control. It is a system of environmental control which is unduly centralised and bureaucratic and does not rely on the market to provide the results.

I wish also to draw attention to a number of findings in the report which are quite serious. The report states that placing a limit on CO² emissions would have a severe impact on the potential for national economic development. However, Ireland accepted an EC policy which involves doing just that. We have had no debate in this House as to whether concerns about global warming and CO² are valid. There is considerable scientific debate about whether this is the case. Large sums of money have already been spent by the ESB to eliminate sulphur emissions into the atmosphere. The Taoiseach may be aware, as a former Minister for Energy, that sulphur emissions actually cool the atmosphere, whereas CO² emissions increase the temperature. Every ton of sulphur extracted from the atmosphere by the use of the equipment installed at Moneypoint generates three extra tons of CO² into the atmosphere. Therefore, we have spent a huge amount of money on environmental protection in regard to sulphur emissions which is actually contributing to global warming. That is the sort of decision which is taken by engineers responding to political pressure without an overview as to our ultimate environmental objective. This debate is particularly important because it gives this House an opportunity to consider all environmental issues, put them in a total conspectus and set an order of priorities.

I would like to advert to another disquieting finding in this report. Ireland appears to be particularly inefficient in reducing CO² output in response to increases in energy prices. Our price for fossil fuels which contain CO² is twice as high as that in Switzerland. One would expect that emissions of CO² would be halved in response to the higher price prevailing here. Yet, Switzerland, where the price of fossil fuels containing CO² is half that of ours, also has half our level of CO² emission intensity. That indicates that there is something structurally wrong with our economy in that price increases do not lead to conservation. This House should try to provide an answer to that question.

Many local authorities at present line dumps with polythene in the hope that such lining will forever prevent the escape of lethal material into the ground water but that will not work. As this report points out, lining sites as a barrier to ground water contamination is relatively meaningless in terms of geological time. Furthermore, local authorities and rate payers may find themselves in the future liable for huge damages in respect of claims that may be made against them by users of ground water in the vicinity of dumps that are being put in place now and those that have been operating for ten years. In EC law there is a proposal for retrospective absolute liability without reference to fault for those who cause environmental damage. We need to know the implications of that soon to provide for the solvency of many local authorities who already may be allowing material escape into the ground water supply. This is happening at Basketstown dump near Summerhill, County Meath, where waste material is escaping into the ground water supply. If Meath County Council is sued, following the passing of an EC Directive imposing absolute environmental liability, such action could bankrupt Meath County Council. That is one example of hundreds of such operations throughout the country. We do not know where our major aquifers are because we do not have adequate mapping arrangements. How can we protect them if we do not know where they are?

I wish to refer to another matter which may sound somewhat esoteric that of the danger posed to children by the giant hogweed which is spreading uncontrollably here. If a child touches the sap emerging from this weed it will lead to blistering and permanent damage to the skin. I asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry what control measures he would introduce in this regard. He accepted the question and did not transfer it to another Minister, but when replying he said he had no responsibility in the matter. That clearly shows that nobody knows who is responsible for controlling the spread of dangerous plants here.

In regard to forestry policy, the level of grants given at present is inadequate to ensure sufficient planting of broadleaf trees as distinct from conifers. At present the grant for broadleaves is £2,000 per hectare while for conifers it is between £900 and £1,100 per hectare. Given that it takes much longer for a monetary return from broadleaves the grant differential is insufficient. I suggest it should be four to one to provide adequate planting of conifers.

The Government's submission to the Rio conference on the Environment stated that it did not support the use of nuclear power. Yet, this report states that:

Ireland's moratorium on nuclear energy, which provides the main input to EC emissions stabilisation in the 1980s, will remain in place for the foreseeable future. However, in the context of EC studies on the long term structure of the energy supply sector which consider the need to minimise environmental impact and gaseous emissions including CO², the role of nuclear power must inevitably be re-examined.

This report acknowledges that extra generating capacity at huge cost must be provided and because there is a lack of conservation policy here the issue of nuclear power will be re-examined. We should not react in this House to that issue in an excited way but we should ask the question is that finding valid? We must analyse the options for energy supply in a calm way considering that all electricity generation options have environmental cost. For example, coal-fired and peat-fired generation also damages the environment and while gas generation does not damage the environment very much it is limited in supply. This report indicates that there will be a huge increase in the demand for electricity over the next 20 years. How is that demand to be met without reconsidering the option of nuclear fuel? That question must be asked and answered honestly here.

I appreciate that the Taoiseach agreed to open this debate and stayed to listen to this debate. I hope he and his officials will ensure that his Department will continue to take a major interest in this issue. As I stated earlier, it is through long term planning and anticipation of the difficulties that may arise that problems will be avoided. We must move away from the position where the Dáil spends all its time putting out fires — we should engage much more in fire prevention.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this report, its contents and also what it omits. This report is very good in so far as it goes but it does not go far enough. Firstly, in many areas the recommendations are not quantified. There is no sense of the targets to be achieved and the deadline by which they should be achieved. Secondly, there is a curiously negative flavour to the whole report, as if protecting the environment were essentially a matter of policing and control, rather than of education and of possibility.

The sections on manufacturing properly deal with issues like waste reduction and prevention, but there is no section on "ecopreneuring", not a commonly used word in this country. There is nothing in the report about stimulating industries to produce environmentally friendly alternatives to currently available products. In other countries it is believed that a new breed of environmental entrepreneurs may provide our best chance for restoring proper standards to the air, water and earth on which all life depends. Regulations are framed in a way which help stimulate the market for the wares of ecopreneurs. For example, a 1990 law in California mandates that glass bottlers use a higher percentage of recycled glass than used in previous years. This, of course, creates a new market for glass recyclers and may potentially make their businesses more profitable. The report not only has little to offer in that area, but it is generally short in content when it comes to individual action. It seems to have concentrated on general aspirations at Government and corporate level and that is not enough.

Consumers are the end users of what manufacturers produce and by purchasing those products have a considerable impact on the environment. Yet, the report makes little reference to the identification, labelling and marketing of more environmentally friendly products.

There is virtually nothing in the report about changing the attitudes and behaviours of individuals. That is puzzling because the environment will not be saved by rules and regulations alone, but by improving the pattern of choice exercised by millions of individuals.

This report should have dealt extensively with the topic of environmental education for the general public. If we have a virtually pristine environment at present, each of us should have a sense of how we can contribute to its maintenance. The reality is that the greatest concentration of toxic chemicals is often found under the sink in an ordinary kitchen. Proper disposal of household chemicals such as waste motor oil, glass, cans and so on, can have a beneficial impact on the environment. Household use of energy, of energy-efficient technology and of insulation can have the same beneficial impact. Yet this aspect of Irish life is almost completely ignored in this report.

That implies that the incremental impact of millions of everyday choices and decisions of ordinary people is irrelevant to the environment. How can that be the case? It implies also that the consumer, the voter and the taxpayer is not worth educating or motivating. I am sure the latter implication is not intended by those who drafted the report, but the Department of the Environment has no comprehensive environmental education programme, whether for schools, householders or anybody else. It issues a few leaflets and that is one's lot. This is disgraceful. I had hoped the Green 2000 group might have drawn attention to it, and indicated some targets in this area.

If we had a Government which was known to have an environmental vision and to be determined to make Ireland an environmental oasis in a damaged Europe, the writing of this report might have been influenced by a sense of positive possibility. It clearly has not been influenced by such a sense.

Instead of going for broke and making us think about an Ireland where the unique selling point is environmental concern, where the industries we seek to create are environmentally friendly, where there is high level of individual understanding of and responsibility towards, the environment, it has concentrated on the area of hopeful advice to Government and the corporate sector. It is not long since we had a Government with an environmental conscience and we could point to achievements in the environmental area. Progress was made and we even had a Minister for the Environment. Something has changed.

The environmental conscience appears to have disappeared from the Government and so far environmental achievements have stopped dead.

Deputy Keogh does not have much love for the Minister.

I am not talking only of the Minister present. The Minister for the Environment could better be described as a Minister for local government. He has held on to the environment title for the optics and, unfortunately, the Minister is big on optics. For example, it was reported this week in our newspapers that Ireland had offered to help solve the environmental problems of the emerging countries of Eastern and Central Europe. According to the Irish Independent the Minister for the Environment will put forward the new Environmental Protection Agency as an organisational model for similar agencies in central and eastern Europe.

God help them.

That is interesting. That agency is barely operational and we hear little about it. Nevertheless, we will advise countries in central and eastern Europe on their environmental problems.

Without the money.

That agency was not dreamt up by a Fianna Fáil Government; in fact, they did not want it established. On the contrary — I have to be a little vainglorious in this regard — the Environmental Protection Agency is a Progressive Democrats concept and reality. Without Deputy Harney there would be no such agency.

That was a Fine Gael Bill. Let us have all the facts.

Fine Gael did all the drafting and the Progressive Democrats took all the credit.

Deputy Harney ran away with it.

Without the Progressive Democrats at the Cabinet table the Environmental Protection Agency would be a much more watered down body. Because the Progressive Democrats were prepared to fight for the policies we believe in, at least we have an Environmental Protection Agency, but before it is up and running properly, the Minister is offering to teach other nations how to sovle their environmental problems. That might be laughable if it was not so tragic. The idea that a Minister for the Environment who since the new Government was formed, has not come up with one single initiative to save our wonderful pristine and marketable environment, could go around Europe offering to solve other countries' environmental problems is embarrassing.

The Minister's utterances have not centred on the natural environment. He talked about spending on roads and about incinerators without answering vital questions in regard to how much toxic waste we have, how it is being coped with at present, how it can be reduced and the future options in this area. It might have been assumed that the Minister, before he started to proselytize on behalf of the incinerator option, might have read in the Green 2000 Report a sequence of recommendations for manufacturing industry. That sequence starts with the need to build environmental impact assessments into all manufacturing planning. It goes on to stress the need for Government encouragement of environmental auditing. It then states:

The Government should actively promote waste minimisation and clean technlogy as an integral part of industrial policy. The Government should also set targets for the recycling of commercial and industrial wastes.

Where is our waste disposal Bill?

Next year, mañana.

Has the Government, as personified by the Minister for the Environment, taken all those and run with them? He failed to mention those matters. I do not understand the reason for that. Perhaps it is in the interest of Fianna Fáil developers.

The Minister has failed to see the urgent necessity for a toxic waste incinerator. Before any Deputy from the Fianna Fáil side informs us that the Green 2000 advisory group recommends a national hazardous waste facility, let me point out that it does not recommend an incinerator and makes no reference to one. On the contrary, it refers to an integrated hazardous waste disposal system and the final disposal of hazardous waste in an environmentally sound manner. The Minister for the Environment will not waste his time on subtleties such as that. He just wants an incinerator. If he was a doctor he would be writing a prescription before he laid a stethoscope on the patient. That would be a dangerous way to practise medicine and it is a dangerous way to run the Department of the Environment. Instead of gathering all the data, surveying all the available options and setting out to create practices which would limit the amount of toxic waste generated, the Minister is making a rushed judgment.

Waste disposal is only one area of environmental concern and comprises a small section of this report. We need a great deal of action in the environmental area and we need that action as soon as possible. The grim reality is that we, on this side of the House, must stay actively and assertively on the case to ensure that the recommendations in this report are implemented. This Government has lost interest in the environment.

Our party is committed in a practical, realistic and pro-business way to the environment. I welcome the publication of this report. I agree with a great deal of its recommendations, but I have a grim foreboding that, in terms of translation into practical policy, this Government will see it as not worth the recycled paper on which it is published.

Twenty minutes is a short time in which to consider the contents in this body of recycled paper, but we may have a proportionately similar timeframe in which to deal with the serious questions which face us on a global level. It is certainly a salutary reminder of what has to be done. Unfortunately, the report does not recognise the level of the various crises which face us in 1993. The terms of the report do not assist in that regard because they refer to protecting and enhancing the natural environment as if it is something that can be dealt with in isolation, such as a nice building or an area of land. The report needs to be more wide-ranging; it needs to put forward proposals in regard to the development of a sustainable way of living, the only guarantee we have that future actions will not create problems similar to those with which we have to deal at present.

The report refers to the needs to pay due attention to Common Agricultural Policy. I accept the need for this as 80 per cent of our land is used for agricultural purposes, but if we want to emphasise anything it should be the link between production and consumption. Instead of simply saying that we need clean production, we should emphasise the need for clean consumption also — those who produce and those who consume are part of a cycle and this link should be recognised by everybody. This cycle should be reduced so that goods are produced and consumed locally. This is the only way people will begin to see the effects of their actions on the environment. Local production should be based on local needs. This would also generate employment, which is so badly needed. It is very important at all times to bear in mind the link between production and consumption.

I do not see the element of urgency in this report which I hoped it would contain. The intergovernmental panel on climate change agreed that a 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be needed. It goes on to recommend that the developed world, of which we are privileged to be a part, has a major responsibility to go beyond this target. If we do not do this we will be penalising the developing world which will also have to cut back even though it has not begun to develop in any real way. Therefore, the balance has to be weighed against the developed world if it is to be just. This seems to have been ignored in the report. It seems to be a classic example of the monkey who covered his eyes, ears and mouth; it chose to ignore the issue. The group seem to have gone for the safe option of the EC recommendation of a 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2000. Knowing that that target is not good enough, it then tries to justify its position by saying that there is a link between economic growth and the increase in CO2 emissions and that this has to be borne in mind; in other words, we should not do anything too rash because we are not sure who we want to offend. There is a need for much more radical thinking in this area.

If economic growth is linked to CO2 emissions, which I believe it is and this is recognised in the report, then we should doubt its value as a means of organising our affairs. We need to look at what are stable economics and not continue to fool ourselves that we can get around the problems and still maintain economic growth patterns similar to those of the industrial revolution without having to worry too much about the effects. We need to carry out more research into the area of economics if we want to improve the situation for the next generation. I suggest that we could make a good start in this area by reading Richard Douthwaite's book The Growth Illusion, which gives into these matters the necessary insight which is missing from the report.

While reference is made in the report to renewable energy, no proper consideration is given to this issue. It refers to 7 per cent of our electricity needs being generated by wind. Seven per cent is not a large figure, and I do not think wind generated electricity is the be-all and end-all in terms of renewable energy. In 1982 the National Board for Science and Technology published a report on wave power in Ireland which stated, and I quote:

It appears that the Irish west coast, from Malin Head to Cape Clear, has among the highest coastal wave power levels in the world, at over 50 kW/metre annual mean.

It went on to say that the estimated mean level of wave power is 70 kW/metre in places and that this is better than anywhere in the UK. It continued:

The current design of Salter duck, the most productive of the devices under development in the UK, could land over 20 kW/metre from such a site.

According to this report, approximately one-quarter of our electricity needs could be provided from one site using just 10 kilometres of devices. The recommendation that 7 per cent of our electricity needs could be generated from wind is not a realistic perception of our potential and does not deal seriously with the options open to us. No reference is made to biomass, even though we have a high level of timber production. While solar power may appear to be an option on a fine day like today, more consideration needs to be given to the way we build our houses — houses should face south rather than face any other direction, as is the case at present.

I wish to point out to the Minister that many people outside this House have in many respects a more realistic perception than this report of what needs to be done. While the report contains many good recommendations it does not deal with all of the problems in a satisfactory way. Groups like Energy Action and the National Ecology Centre, the first stage of which will be opened by the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Deputy Quinn, in Laytown today, have a real contribution to make in terms of the action which needs to be taken. I ask that consultation takes place with these groups.

We are not talking only about the problems in Ireland; we are talking about global problems. Unless we deal with the problems on a global basis our efforts will be worthless. If we deal only with the problems in Ireland and disregard the problems in other countries they will come back on us in the long term. The globe is inter-connected and we cannot deal with the problems in one country without considering the problems in other countries also.

I wish to emphasise that the globe is not occupied only by humans. Instead of talking about the things which have to be done for our welfare, we should look beyond the concept of the human family. The report seems to be anthropocentric, human centred. I should like to see a more eco centric approach adopted in the report. The Taoiseach emphasised, as if by way of an excuse, that we could consider environmental protection important because, as the report says, a high quality environment is essential to the success of Irish manufacturing industry. That is fine, but we have to be wary of justifying something which is very necessary simply from the point of view of the human interest. There is a much wider question at issue here. To look at the environment in terms of capital is to miss the point entirely. Sometimes this can be very dangerous. The assumption is that somehow we can improve nature and act like God, so to speak,

Dublin County Council planners often talk about improving nature and even the Taoiseach yielded to the temptation today when he referred to enhancing the environment. The environment was fine before people began to destroy it and I do not know how we can go about enhancing it. There are people trying very hard at present to improve nature and I do not approve of all the methods being used, for example, genetic engineering, to achieve this. It does threaten the bio-diversity, so important if our environment is to be sustained at all. Genetic engineering involves acting God, creating types of life in direct competition with God's own creation. This is now considered to be normal in agriculture, industry and in certain other areas.

We must be very cautious about genetic engineering because the threat it poses to existing life forms is unquantifiable. For example, when tests are conducted on the whole eco-system, something is released from a test tube and away it goes but one cannot predict how it will react, although it must be said that there have been some reactions which have been quite worrying. What is more worrying is the attitude that life itself becomes private capital, which is carried through to an acceptance that such things as beast wagons in circuses are there for our good, benefit and entertainment. Another example is the exotic collection of animals in zoos and the endorsement of hare coursing by this Government, pending the introduction of a Bill which will hopefully lead to a change in that practice. It will be seen that that type of attitude is pervasive and obstructs much of the constructive thinking that should prevail in tackling the problems outlined in the Green 2000 Advisory Group report.

There are many good aspects to the report. Hopefully, they will be implemented. For example, the section on tourism is indeed relevant and important and talks about "sustainable tourism". The word "sustainable" is used in proper context there. The phrase "sustainable growth" is unintelligible because growth and its sustenance do not always constitute the same thing. The emphases on cycling, walking, activity holidays, not constructing unnecessary roads in places where they would be an intrusion, are to be welcomed as constituting commendable aspirations.

I would worry about the attitude that the environment is there to be exploited so long as we do it carefully, for example, the proposal to promote hunting activities, allowing people come here to kill for fun. Recreation is not compatible with killing for fun; that would be the view of the Green Party, which may not necessarily be shared by all others.

I should like some specific short term aspects of the report to be taken on board, for example, the safeguards recommended in relation to the expenditure of Cohesion Funds. If the expenditure of these funds is to be rushed, then it is most important that we make provision for some type of environmental audit of how they are spent. We should remember that, when one receives a large amount of money, there is the temptation to rush off, spend it without proper preparation, especially at a time when we are confronted by enormous economic problems. I would recommend our looking to the NESF having a strong environmental representation in regard to both the Structural and Cohesion Funds, which commitment would not be costly. I look forward to some such assurance being given, some definite decision being reached, on the environmental representation of various non-governmental organisations who are doing such good work.

The "polluter pays" principle has not been given the emphasis it deserves in the report, or to the extent I should have liked. We must realise that it has wide-ranging implications and, if not adhered to, allows too many people off the hook, since it relates to all facets of life, to the consumer, agricultural and industrial producers and their intermediaries. It worries me that there is no clear reference, for example, to waste management. The matter of waste disposal is emphasised. The thinking here needs to be changed because, once one accepts that waste must be disposed of, one must realise that one will be confronted by an ongoing problem of waste. I note that the Taoiseach referred to waste disposal in his introductory remarks this morning. If we mean to be ecologically-friendly, we should be talking in terms of waste management. There is a great difference between the two since management entails re-use or recycling rather than disposal, except when strictly necessary, all other options having been exhausted and, even then, it should be done in a harmless manner. Again, the "polluter pays" principle internalises these costs so that we have a proper assessment of the value of what we use taking into consideration the costs of its side effects. If it were a central part of our economic policy, it would encourage minimisation of waste and also encourage the use of best available technology not entailing excessive costs. For example, incineration should involve examining other options since incineration is extremely expensive and damages the environment. I learn now that in some places hospital waste is micro-waved to disinfect or sterilise dangerous substances rather than incinerate them. We must not assume that incineration is the only option.

If the "polluter pays" principle were implemented in the agricultural sphere it would give people a greater incentive to engage in the transition necessary from chemical to organic farming. They would be saving energy, which is to the advantage of all of us, while at the same time, cutting down on CO² emissions and costs, in addition to ensuring bio-diversity. We must remember that wild or natural areas need to be maintained if organic farming is to benefit from the natural balance in nature itself. It is more humane, not being so intensive in terms of animal husbandry, and there is a high consumer demand. It has inherent economic advantages as well as being more labour-intensive. I imagine that the former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, is at this moment busy on his organic farm. His example could well be followed by other Members before or after retirement.

One worrying aspect of the report is the fact that nuclear power is to be re-examined. We should remember that seven years ago on Monday last the nuclear plant at Chernobyl exploded, from which we still feel the effects. I would ask that that proposal be deleted. I do not think we can consider nuclear power, in the light of its history, as constituting in any way a realistic option or solution to any of our problems.

The issue of freedom of information affects everything contained in this report. In this respect the Government's exemption of An Bord Pleanála from the scope of the EC freedom of information directive is a great worry to many people working in the non-governmental organisations on the environment. They make the point that, in the directive, it was said that greater access to free information leads to better environmental protection, in that we know then what is happening, what is wrong and can deal with the problem. While on the subject of EC directives, we should not depend solely on EC standards since, quite often, they are drawn up for the benefit of highly populated urban areas in Central Europe whereas we here are in a much better position to ensure higher standards. We should be known for maintaining such higher standards here.

With regard to planning we should examine and/or seek the inclusion of all public and private developments in the proposals, especially those located close to areas of special scientific interest. I might mention golf courses as being one example for inclusion in that planning process, which could be done at no great cost.

The real test will arise vis-à-vis the carbon tax which, if implemented, should give a greater boost to local economies because of its resultant reduced energy. We should encourage that proposal rather than view it as a burden because it could also encourage more sustainabletype economics.

In conclusion, the Green Party encourage the Minister to implement the report and the amendments we hope will be made. As a member of the Finance Standing Committee I hope we will have an opportunity to consider what can be done in this regard. The Taoiseach should give priority to certain items and, with the co-operation of the Minister and the Cabinet, to implement the report so that we can start to tread lightly on the earth.

The present European action programme on the environment states that the reconciliation of the environment and development is one of the principle challenges facing the Community in the nineties. One of my big problems with the report is that the advisory group, whose terms of reference were, namely, to review the key issues facing the natural environment and to identify policies and strategies which should be adopted, were restricted solely to the natural environment. This only serves to further polarise the developer and the environmentalist. We should move away from this concept but, unfortunately, because the group, in their terms of reference, were restricted solely to the natural environment they were not allowed to properly consider the benefits to be gained from sustainable development in our country and further afield. I am disappointed that its terms of reference were limited which serves to polarise further the developer and the environmentalist. An effort should have been made to get them to the table to agree on the way forward.

Compared with the environmental report produced for the Culliton review group on industrial policy this report is dull, dreary and unreadable. Thousands of pounds were spent in producing the Culliton report with the advice of consultants whereas it appears this report was compiled with the best will in the world by second level students, using recycled paper, as their environmental statement. It is my impression that the group concerned was so under-resourced that it could not do the job it was asked. This is a tragedy.

On reading the report one gets the impression that there was tension. For instance, the report states: "However, some members of the group do not agree all the contents of the position papers". We should have been told which members did not agree and on what position papers. We are entitled to know this but we have not been told.

Furthermore the report states: "Having examined the state of the environment in so far as we have been able, given the limited resources at our disposal, we conclude that..." It is obvious that this group had no resources at its disposal and an opportunity was missed. This is a tragedy given that so much could have been done.

In relation to the question of resources, it depends on who one is. It is obvious that unlimited resources was available in regard to the Benson report which was attached to the Cullition report given the quality of production. I put it to the Minister that this report is not an integrated document despite the best efforts of the Taoiseach to present it as such this morning.

Another major drawback is that the report contains a series of sectoral chapters many of which are good while others are extremely disappointing and do not point us in any clear direction. These chapters should have been appendices to the main report and should have been tied together in one governing chapter but this has not been done. The report is unreadable as a result.

Like the Taoiseach, I congratulate and thank the eminent people who gave of their time to produce the report but with respect, there were far too many from the State sector. The chairman of the group was a special adviser to the Taoiseach while another member was the special adviser to the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment. They were not going to rock any boats. If one looks at the titles of the other eminent people who compiled the report one will see that they were tied to the Government of the day and if we are honest, were not going to rock the boat.

I commend the former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, for his vision in setting up this group but the tragedy is that there is no sense of urgency about the task of achieving sustainable development. Words such as "we should encourage", "we must reduce", "we must increase", "we may", "we could" or "we might" are used rather than words such as "we shall" and there is no timetable by which time certain things must be done. The report is too safe because those who drew it up were far too close to the Government of the day to rock the boat.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy in relation to this report, "Green 2000", the aim of which is to identify policies which should be adopted by the Government for the next seven to eight years, is that no reference is made to our global responsibilities in terms of environmental protection, sustainable development and economic development. Any group which produces a report which is insular and manages to ignore the fact that environmental degradation and pollution know no bounds must be questioned.

The report states, on page 12:

In order to achieve our target and advance ahead of other countries in environmental protection, we must make active additional interventions over and above those presently being made under national and EC environmental policy and legislation.

I agree with that statement but what is the reason we do not spell out the areas where we can give a lead in Europe and globally in relation to environmental standards. For example, what is the reason we do not give a lead in relation to mandatory environmental audits? Indeed, the private sector is leading the way for the public and State sector in this regard not because it is required to do so by legislation but because the financial institutions and insurance companies are insisting that environmental audits should be carried out in relation to developments. I concede that there is no need to make publication compulsory immediately but we should make it compulsory immediately for the State and semi-State sectors to carry out environmental audits. In order to allow companies get their house in order we should not require them to publish such results for, say three, five or seven years. I would be generous in this regard because it would be regarded as a new requirement.

If the statement I quoted is to mean anything we must lead the way having regard to the fact that this country has a beautiful environment, if we are honest, more through luck than Government policy, 70 per cent of our manufacturing industry has been established since 1973 and the introduction of planning controls. Therefore, 70 per cent of our industry is subject to firm planning controls and certain licensing conditions. As a result, unlike many other countries, we have not suffered from industrial degradation. We have a beautiful country and a quality environment which is matched only in a small number of places round the globe. We should not, therefore, make such bland statements.

For example, what is the reason we do not insist on high standards in relation to air quality, higher than the T.A. Luft limits accepted by the European Community in their regulations and on continental Europe? Our air quality is higher than the minimum standards laid down by Europe. We should insist that these standards are maintained. We should give a lead and protect what we have got. Were the advisers so close to Ministers and the Taoiseach that they were afraid to state what should be in this report? I am afraid the answer is that they were.

The Taoiseach mentioned that marine considerations were outside the terms of reference. I have read the terms of reference dozens of times and barring a mental block on my part, marine environment is not outside the terms of reference of the advisory group. The reason the marine could not be considered was that insufficient resources were given to this excellent group of individuals to come up with a sectoral report on the marine environment. Even when they requested more money, they did not get it. Among the group there was no expertise on the marine, so the marine had to be omitted. They quite rightly acknowledge in their general recommendations that there is a need for a specialist group to examine the management of marine environment. They did not have the specialist knowledge in the group and they were not provided with the resources to examine this area. The terms of reference, which do not exclude marine considerations, had therefore to be ignored.

On page 13, paragraph 4 of the general recommendations states:

The underlying theme for the next round of Structural/Cohesion and other E.C. funds should be to maximise our potential in having the highest quality environment within the European Community.

We need urgent answers from the relevant Ministers handling the Cohesion Funds in this area because the projects that have been submitted to draw down Cohesion Funds have no environmental impact statements alongside them. If the commitment to the environment which we read about in the report of the Green 2000 Advisroy Group is to mean anything, each project for which we are drawing down funds from the Cohesion Fund must have an environmental impact assessment and statement accompanying it. Because of the rush to have projects submitted for funding in 1993, there is none. If the Government's present policy is a total negation of what is stated in the Green 2000 report, what are we on about? Is this just another report to gather dust on a shelf in the various Departments and more than likely in the Custom House?

In their general recommendations, the group state:

9. Economic instruments in which tax and grant provisions are designed to protect and enhance the natural environment should be an integral component of environment and fiscal policies.

I strongly agree but we should say what we are going to do. In England the Department of Trade and Industry make available grants at the rate of 65 per cent to help existing industries retrofit for clean technologies generally. Is the Government prepared to put its money where its mouth is and pay generous grants to industries towards the introduction of clean technologies and clean production in existing industries? Will the Government tell us if it intends to put its money where its mouth is? Grants are the carrot. We also need to consider various taxes — I am very partial to a carbon tax and indeed Europe is coming along that road and I think it will become a reality. We need to impose penalties if people do not comply with environmental standards. We will need to take a carrot and stick approach, which recognises the close relationship between further growth which will create the jobs we so badly need while protecting the high quality of our environment. One is not the enemy of the other: economic growth is not the enemy of the environment; neither are environmental standards the enemy of economic growth. We need to get both sides around the table so that we can go forward.

Point 10 of the general recommendations states that environmental impact assessment procedures need to be improved. I agree, but I would need a long time to list the difficulties with environmental impact assessments. This procedure has become so expensive that it is the preserve of very wealthy industries. Because the Environmental Protection Agency is under-resourced — in fact it has no resources — we are unlikely to have the environmental data base that is so urgently needed in order that environmental impact assessments can be carried out efficiently and effectively in the short term. We perhaps need to consider an interim measure to assess the environmental impact of projects. For example, a statement on the environmental effects, SEE, would be particularly good for small and medium sized enterprises. One of the great problems with environmental impact assessment legislation is that it only applies to large industries. Any industry that has the capacity to impact adversely on our environment should have an environmental statement accompanying the planning and licensing applications. I suggest that a statement of environmental effect could be applied to small and medium sized enterprises. If the statement of the environment effect indicated that a full environmental impact assessment was necessary, that could be a further requirement. The minimum cost of an environmental impact assessment is approximately £20,000. While this is an excellent idea, it could be self-defeating if the cost of the assessment alone prevents industries from establishing in this country. Industries that may have no adverse environmental effect may not be prepared to risk in the region of £20,000 to £40,000 to produce an environmental impact assessment that states their industry will not adversely affect our environment.

Point 11 of the general recommendations deals with access to information. We pay lip service to the freedom of access to information. If the public have access to environmental information a great many of the fears and perceived difficulties could be resolved. We could make progress in economic growth if we weed out the real fears from the perceived fears. The fact that the public has been precluded from access to information gives rise to difficulties. They cannot go into many county councils and check a planning application made by Joe Bloggs to establish an industry. The process is shrouded in secrecy as if there was some sort of canoodling between the chief planning officer and the managing director of the company concerned. There is not, but we are giving the impression that there is more at stake than there actually is. We should let the public have open access to environmental information. Let us comply with our EC obligations in this regard and do so quickly. We have been talking about this for so long that not much more can be said.

The group also recommends that we have comprehensive waste legislation. We all agree that this is urgently needed. On the Order of Business this morning I asked the Taoiseach about this and I was told it was coming later this year —mañana. Could we please fast track the waste legislation as this is the single most important legislation in the environmental area? It is required urgently.

While there are some excellent sectoral reports, others are very disappointing. I made the point already that there is no governing chapter so there is no integration of the sectoral interests. As far as I am concerned this is a big mistake. The report on the agricultural sector is extremely good, except for one omission. Organic production does not merit even two lines. I know that it will not replace mainstream agricultural enterprise but there is growing consumer interest in this niche and it should be encouraged.

Windpower should be considered as an alternative land use. The technology of turbines is very simple and we have the best wind regime in Europe. We are always talking about alternative enterprises but this area gets scant mention in the report, even though it could be considered as an alternative land use.

Land use, the zoning of land, the integration of land use and urban communities, and land use and rural development are ignored because the terms of reference deal only with the natural environment. We cannot isolate the natural environment from the environment in which we all live. We cannot isolate the environment around local authority housing estates or the environment outside all our back doors or kitchen widows. The environment is where we live. It is both a natural and built environment and the report is artificial in discussing only the natural environment in isolation.

The report states that the development of less environmentally harmful fertilisers should be encouraged. Indeed the word "encouraged" should be taken out of the report. We should timetable the introduction of new products.

The aquaculture section is extremely good. There is a missed opportunity in the report to give preferential treatment to renewable energy sources. Wavepower was mentioned and I have referred to windpower.

The greatest sin in this entire report of some 378 pages is that eight pages only are given over to the manufacturing industry. Our problem is how to develop our economy without adversely impacting on our environment. The biggest problem area is manufacturing industry, but it gets only eight pages. This is the most appalling chapter. We really need another report of the same size on manufacturing industry and sustainable development. There is no sense of urgency about achieving sustainable development generally. There is minimal emphasis on clean production. The tone of the report is that the Government "should encourage" and companies "should be encouraged". We must realise that companies will carry out environmental audits because insurance companies and financial institutions will say so. We must give the lead in this area.

There are some very good points about tourism in the report. I do not have time to deal with the matter of waste disposal but a waste Bill is urgently needed. As regards transport infrastructure, emphasis is needed on sustainable mobility so that we will have more access to our place of work rather than a policy of more toys for the boys and a capital intensive approach of new regimes. I have doubts about the £300 million light rail project — Manchester is having a serious rethink in that regard — but that is a matter for another day.

Nuclear power is referred to on page 166 of the report, almost as if it was sneaked in at the back. No Minister has said the Government are going to reconsider this matter. As regards fusion power, if that could be a commercial reality — I am not sure whether technology is advanced in this regard — it should be considered. Fission power is not acceptable any longer. Part of the omission from this report is our lack of acceptance of our global responsibility in the environmental area. There is not even a mention of Sellafield which is only 60 miles from us. This is a totally insular report. A proactive, integrated policy is needed. We must shift from the present clean-up perspective towards prevention generally.

The rapid increase in world population and in economic activity in the last few decades has increased enormously the quantities of waste and pollutants. The focus has moved from local problems to national and international problems, but this report takes no regard of that fact. While progress has been made in the last 20 years in the West, or the developed world, globally little has been achieved environmentally. The extent and severity of environmental degradation in eastern and central Europe poses a special challenge to economic reform and for the rehabilitation of the environment.

In the developing world priorities of population growth and debt have overwhelmed any efforts to improve the environment. Acid rain, global warming, ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect on climate change and tropical deforestation continue to remind us in our beautiful country that any environmental policy must recognise our international responsibility and the need to integrate into our ODA programme conservation issues and to participate effectively in international conventions and European and global conservation programmes. Our policy must take account of the economic and ecological interdependence of the world.

The Green 2000 Advisory Group report is a benchmark in terms of future action to protect and enhance the natural environment. The marine area comprising the marine and fresh water environment is an invaluable national asset. In my area of ministerial responsibility both the aquaculture and inland fisheries sectors fall under my remit. I was pleased that while the previous speaker was critical of some areas of the report she particularly praised the element relating to aquaculture and inland fisheries. I will address these two items in the time available to me. Both of these indigenous industries rely heavily on a clean, unpolluted environment to survive and develop, and their future development can only be compatible with the highest standards of environmental excellence. I welcome the fact that aquaculture and inland fisheries feature prominently in this 11 chapter report, meriting a chapter each.

I would like to address aquaculture first and to give my preliminary reaction to some of the fundamental concepts discussed in the report. It is significant that a relatively new industry like aquaculture features so prominently in the report in comparison to other established sectors such as agriculture. With an output valued at some £40 million annually— 1.2 per cent of agricultural output — the prominence given to aquaculture in the report reflects the high level of environmental scrutiny to which the fish farming industry has been subjected in recent years.

I am pleased to note that the report acknowledges the rapid growth and development of the Irish aquaculture industry and its contribution to job creation and economic activity. Some 2,600 persons are employed directly in aquaculture with the bulk of employment located in isolated coastal regions with little alternative employment opportunities. Annual production has risen from 5,000 tonnes in 1980 to some 27,000 tonnes in 1991, valued at some £40 million.

Our sea and freshwater resources provide an ideal environment for aquaculture development. Both the marine and freshwater resource encompass the cleanest waters in Europe. The substantial body of monitoring data available on the environmental impact of aquaculture in Ireland to date clearly establishes that the Irish aquaculture industry operates to the highest environmental standards. I would also stress that Ireland's implementation of the Community's Environmental Impact Assessment Directive is the most rigorous in Europe where salmon farming is concerned. This is an area to which I will pay particular attention in the context of ongoing controversies relating to the apparent inter-related decline of our salmon and white trout. Our aquaculture practice embodies the true spirit of the EC's EIA legislation in encouraging and involving full participation by the public.

The Government is committed to support the creation of additional jobs in aquaculture commensurate with the highest environmental standards. This is a matter which I consider with the utmost seriousness. It is envisaged that over the five year period up to 1997 more than 1,000 new jobs can be created in aquaculture and associated onshore facilities with a corresponding increase in the value of aquaculture production to a figure of some £102 million. There will also be a significant number of jobs created downstream in added value processing and marketing and in the supplies and services area. The proposed strategy for achieving this objective focuses strongly on partnership with coastal communities and in particular a greater involvement with community based cooperatives to develop the local marine resource. The growth of aquaculture highlights the economic possibilities offered by our invaluable natural resources when developed in a planned, environmentally conscious way.

The focus on aquaculture in the Green 2000 report is to be welcomed and provides a useful background against which our existing development and regulatory policies can be scrutinised. I welcome the opportunity for critical and constructive debate of these issues which the report's thoughtful exposition affords us. The report makes 14 substantive recommendations in relation to aquaculture. All of these recommendations are being thoroughly assessed by the Department of the Marine in consultation — I stress the word "consultation"— with the relevant interested parties and agencies. The Department of the Marine is at all times conscious of the importance of openness and the need, before arriving at conclusions, to consult with those parties who have an interest in the item under discussion.

The Green 2000 report deals extensively with the regulatory system for licensing fish farm operations. The policy objective with regard to fish farming operations is to ensure that development takes place in an orderly and will regulated manner with full regard for other interests and in harmony with the environment while maximising the industry's contribution to the economy. The licensing process is an open one. It is also a rigorous and often lengthy process. This is inevitable if we are to ensure that all relevant concerns are taken fully into account. The views of the public and relevant agencies are sought on specific proposals and all comments and objections received undergo comprehensive assessment by the Department's technical and administrative wings prior to any decisions on licensing.

In recent years the strong growth curve in fish farming, particularly salmon farming, has coincided with an intensive scrutiny by the media and environmentalists on the perceived impact of fish farming on the environment. The legislative framework underpinning fish farming as laid down in the Fisheries Acts and the Foreshore Act, 1933, has been in place since the late seventies. Developments within the industry and for example at EC level suggest that the time is now right to review the framework. This is particularly timely given the focus generally on the impact of planning, licensing and environmental issues on all types of development.

Clearly, there are a variety of views on how the system should be overhauled and I note that a radically new permit system is recommended by the report. I have directed the Department to commence a review of the current legislative framework in full consultation with the relevant interests right across the spectrum. The recommendations of the Green 2000 report on this and other issues will be fully taken into account and provide a very welcome perspective on possible new arrangements to underpin future development of the industry.

The second feature of this Cabot/Haughey report that is of particular concern to me relates to inland fisheries. Having regard to the expanse of my remit in the Department of the Marine, I handed responsibility for inland fisheries to my worthy Minister of State, Deputy Gerry O'Sullivan, who is doing a very good job in this area, but on this occasion I will take it upon myself to address inland fisheries as dealt with in the report. I can concur wholeheartedly with all of the recommendations on inland fisheries made in this section of the report. It gives me very great pleasure indeed that the authors of this report have identified, as have the Department of the Marine and the various fisheries boards, the vital economic resource that our inland fisheries represent and the various environmental issues that need to be addressed if that resource is to survive unscathed into future centuries. I heartily congratulate the authors for giving us a blueprint for a programme of action on the environmental front that will ensure a healthy future for all our inland fisheries.

As I have indicated on a number of occasions since coming to office, I am an enthusiastic if somewhat unsuccessful angler. Even before I came to the Department of the Marine I had no difficulty whatsoever in appreciating the scale of the resource that we have in our inland fisheries. However, I sometimes wonder does the community at large or indeed the Members of this House have a similar understanding. The importance is underlined by the jobs potential in the inland fisheries development programme approved in principle by the Government last year. The programme, together with the aquaculture development plan, has been sent forward for incorporation into the National Plan 1994-97——

What about the Salmon Review Group report?

——which is to be submitted for EC Structural Funding and I look forward to a flow of EC resources into the sector in due course. This would be the first occasion on which such EC aid has been made available directly for inland fisheries development. On the last occasion aid was limited to projects assisting the development of angling toursim only.

We will preserve this national resource in its present largely pristine state only if we avoid the mistakes that have been made in other countries and ensure that industrial and other development takes place in a way that does not adversely affect the aquatic environment.

That is the message that comes out of the report we are discussing today. It is a message that we ignore at our peril. Once lost, fish stocks can be difficult and most expensive to re-establish, as can be proved by those responsible for the present efforts to re-introduce salmon into the Lagan and the Thames, not to mention all those other great rivers of Europe that have been destroyed by pollution over the decades. In this regard, I would refer to the Rhine which I knew as a younger Deputy in this House over 25 years ago. That river was seriously polluted. I was glad to learn in the last number of years that it has been revitalised and that salmon stocks have been reintroduced to it and are surviving. It was a running sewer through the heart of Europe. I am glad to see that it has been restored to its former greatness.

I pay a tribute to the pollution officers employed by the fisheries boards who have done a marvellous job over the years under very difficult conditions in ensuring that the quality of our fish-bearing waters was not diminished. The production of the report before us today underlines the value of the work that has been done and remains to be done by this fine group of people and reinforces the need for their expertise and services to continue to be at the disposal of the boards for the future. Too often a distinction is made between the anti-poaching and environmental control aspects of board staff's activities. I would like to see it all as coming under the heading of stock protection, dedicated to the future protection of all our fish stocks.

A word of thanks is due indeed to all staff members of fisheries boards who have worked long hours down through the years and sometimes risked considerable dangers in the service of inland fisheries. It is a considerable reflection on all of us in this House that the numbers on active service in the boards are now down to 280 from 410 some ten years ago. I hope I will be able to secure an improvement in that figure before too long more.

Hear, hear.

This area really concerns me. If we are talking of the need to conserve what we have, which is a great resource, we must as a matter of urgency increase the staff in the fisheries boards. There is a Central Fisheries Board and seven regional fisheries boards and, to say the least, they are understaffed. That is unfortunate. I hope to address this problem in the not too distant future. It is a question of will and finance. We have the will and it is now a matter of obtaining the cash.

As I indicated I would not demur in the slightest, from any of the recommendations in the inland fisheries sector. Many of them have already been adopted by the Department of the Marine or have been argued for by that Department with other agencies who have responsibility for the preservation of water quality in general.

One recommendation, 3.3 gives me great satisfaction because it gives me an opportunity to highlight one of our success stories in pollution control and rehabilitation of lake water. Until some years ago Lough Sheelin in the Shannon system had the reputation of being one of Europe's premier brown trout fisheries. Gradually the quality of the water there deteriorated as intensive pig production developed to an inordinate degree in the immediate catchment. The slurry run-offs led to big increases in nutrient loadings in the lake and the regular appearance of algal blooms on the surface.

The lake more or less died as a fishery but I am glad to say that as a result of co-operation between all the State agencies, local authorities and the farmers involved in managing the output of slurry locally, the water in the lake is now more or less back to its former high quality and fishing in 1992 was almost back to normal. I look forward to many more success stories like this flowing from the recommendations in this report.

The Lough Sheelin is well known to me and I am glad, as an enthusiastic fisherman, as well as a corporate person to be associated with the rehabilitation of Lough Sheelin. It is a magnificent lake with wonderful fish surrounded by a terrific environment and managed by very good people.

I was very glad to see the acknowledgement in the report of the guidelines to protect fisheries interests in the current drive for afforestation. These guidelines represent a big advance in the efforts to accommodate new economic activity in disadvantaged areas with existing valuable resources and they show what can be achieved in an area of potentially competing interests by dint of patient discussion and striving for consensus. I compliment the Forestry Service for setting up and chairing the group that drafted these guidelines and for listening to the point being made by the fisheries side.

The question of peat erosion in upland areas is one that has been giving cause for concern to fisheries interests for some time, leading as it can to clogging of gravels where salmon and trout spawn. I welcome very much the acknowledgement in this report that the problem may have much wider ramifications than simply depressing reproduction of salmon and trout and I look forward to seeing early action by the appropriate authorities on the lines recommended here.

Another recommendation in relation to removal of spawning gravels is particularly topical in so far as the Department of the Marine is concerned. This topic has been the focus of attention in the inland fisheries division of the Department. I am assured that the removal of gravel from a river on a commercial scale at any time is subject to planning permission with all the attendant conditions.

As Minister for the Marine, I would look very unfavourably on any application to remove gravel from a river bed or sand from a seashore. It is a despoilation of an inheritance belonging not only to this generation and to future generations. In that regard I would like to be a guardian of the gravel, river beds and the sand of our foreshore. Furthermore, the Department has been assured by the Attorney General's office that section 173 of the Fisheries (Consolidation) Act, 1959, provides an absolute prohibition on the disturbing of spawning beds or removing gravel from spawning stretches during the months when salmon and trout spawn. The question has recently arisen of gravel being removed from spawning stretches when they are empty of spawn by farmers conducting land drainage operations which are at present exempt from the planning permission requirement. Officials of the Department of the Marine are currently looking at possible solutions to this particular problem in consultation with the Department of the Environment and the fisheries boards.

I have already complimented the authors for a worthwhile report, the recommendations of which need to be examined critically. There is much food for thought and hopefully food for the implementation of what is on offer. I look forward to the early implementation of their recommendations and for my part I can guarantee that anything that needs to be done on the inland fisheries side will be done either by myself or my excellent colleague, the Minister of State at my Department, Deputy O'Sullivan. I will conclude by again complementing the fisheries boards on their efforts to date despite the fact that they are understaffed and under resourced and assuring them of my full support and that of my colleague in their continuing efforts to ensure that the quality of water in our fisheries will leave nothing to be desired.

I would like to thank the Green 2000 Advisory Group for their very comprehensive report. I welcome it as a timely contribution not just to the development of environmental policy but also to industrial policy.

The report clearly states that the target of an unspoilt, unpolluted environment is desirable for not only philosophical reasons but vital also for Ireland's social and economic success. Indeed, one of its recommendations is that:

There needs to be an increase in the understanding and acceptance at all levels that the maintenance of Ireland's high quality environment is a key ingredient in allowing the economy to develop and generate high quality jobs now and in the future.

I welcome this very clear statement and recommendation, as too often the social and economic arguments have been lost sight of. Clearly, with our high employment rate we cannot afford to lose sight of them. We must keep them very much to the fore not just in developing our industrial policies but also in developing our environmental policies.

In this context it is worthwhile to quote from the report of the industrial policy review group — A Time for Change: "We need to ensure that a balanced concern for environmental protection is not distorted by thoughtlessly anti-industrial, anti-employment attitudes".

I would like to state very clearly in this debate, from the point of view of the Department of Enterprise and Employment — formerly the Department of Industry and Commerce — that industry in Ireland is clean. Indeed, the report makes quite clear that the quality of our environment, in comparison with that of our European partners, is relatively high because of our low population density, our island location and comparatively low levels of industrialisation in farming and in heavy industry. With our industrialisation drive coming later than that of other European countries and as late players into the game we were able to learn from the experience of others and avoid their mistakes.

In the promotion of our industrial development over the last three decades there has been the consistent realisation that there should also be a regard for environmental considerations. In its grant-aiding role the IDA, for example, insists on compliance with the highest environmental standards and this is probably at the root of why industry has such an acceptable face in Ireland today. Our production of waste is by far the lowest in OECD countries on a per capita basis. As a result of the prudent line taken we have today a relatively modern industrial infrastructure with a much less harmful impact on our environment than that of our neighbours in Europe.

The fact that we have clean industry leaves no room for complacency. Indeed, it presents us with an opportunity on which we can build. It gives us a chance to be pioneers in clean production and I can say that the response to the First Cleaner Production National Conference in University College Cork last month indicates that there is considerable interest in clean technology in Ireland at present. The definition of clean production given by Professor Ken Geiser at the conference is:

The conceptual and procedural approach to production that demands that all phases of the life-cycle of a product or of a process should be addressed with the objective of prevention or the minimisation of short — and long term risks to humans and to the environment.

This definition covers all stages of the life-cycle right through from the design stage to the disposal stage and as such must alter the way in which a lot of manufacturing companies look on developing their products and processes. As I have already said there are opportunities there for our industry to lead the way on clean technology.

Public support for industry, which is widely recognised as being the centrepiece of our economic future, is linked to our concern for the environment. Anything which by its nature is clean is quite acceptable provided it does not obtrude on the landscape and create any noise or emissions. Effectively, industry is fine so long as it is clean, not seen and serene. Industrial reality is somewhat different, however.

The reality is that almost any form of economic activity or even the presence of people in a given area will have some impact on the environment there. There have been instances in the past where, because of local opposition and the use of long drawn out planning procedures, important projects with the potential for many jobs have been endangered. While we must all have an interest in protecting and improving the environment this is not incompatible, as is quite clear from the experience in most parts of Ireland today, with industrial development on a properly regulated basis.

Manufacturing industry is extremely important for Ireland and the continued growth of the manufacturing sector here is central to the economic development of our country. Today manufacturing companies employ over 200,000 people, or one-fifth of our total workforce. In addition, with a spend in the economy of nearly IR£12 billion per annum it accounts for over 30 per cent of our gross national product.

However, we must provide the facilities in Ireland to ensure that industry has the capacity to behave in a manner which will enable it to accommodate the principal aim of Green 2000 — the protection of the natural environment. To achieve this objective some difficult decisions may have to be made.

At the outset we must examine what the needs of industry are, given that we accept that a natural consequence of all activity in the sector is waste. As pointed out in the impact of planning, licensing and environmental issues on industry development report to the industrial policy review group, all statistics on waste can only be considered as very approximate. There is an urgent need to assemble up-do-date facts and figures on all waste categories, methods of disposal being employed and the facilities available for current and future waste handling.

The report to the industrial policy review group also points out that waste management has an established hierarchical philosophy for dealing with waste, namely prevention, minimisation, re-use, incineration and landfill. It suggests that in developing a strategy for waste management it is necessary to consider all of these approaches, in sequence, maximising the use of each priority in turn. No one approach can provide the solution we need.

There are many good reasons why Irish industry should care about the protection of the environment. We have a favourable green image which is an important selling point for our food and tourism industries and which we must do our utmost to preserve. Our better environment adds to our quality of life and worker morale. It makes Ireland an attractive place to do business in and do it better. Industrialists are just as concerned about maintaining our green environment as anyone else but they also must insist that a proper balance is maintained between environmental needs and the reasonable needs of industry.

There is by this stage a great concern within the European Community about the deterioration in the environment with much of the policy initiatives to remedy this on a Community basis emanating from the European Commission. The general principles of the Community's environmental policy were defined in the Single European Act and are being developed under the Fifth Action Programme on the Environment under which a wide range of measures have or are being implemented. However, there has arisen within industry a perception of environmental policy moving on inexorably with insufficient concern for its effects on industrial costs and competitiveness. The Community is dedicated to the principles of free trade but the reality is that if its industry is saddled with costs that its competitors do not have to bear, it will lose its competitiveness and therefore its markets.

In the context of industrial policy the EC Commission has initiated a programme to allay the concerns of industry in this regard by seeking to better integrate environmental objectives with industrial policy. The integration of environmental protection considerations into all policy areas is also addressed in the Green 2000 Advisory Group report. The essential feature of this approach is that while industry must move to safeguard the environment this move should be within a framework which will enable industry achieve environmental goals while consolidating its competitiveness.

The twin objectives of stimulating economic activity and achieving a high level of environmental protection can be mutually supportive. There are significant opportunities to be gained by taking the lead in developing more environmental friendly products or clean technologies whether by way of wider consumer appeal, protection cost savings or future opportunities to license technology. The environmental protection market for goods or services for pollution control in the community alone in 1990 was worth $50 billion with 600,000 jobs linked to eco-industries.

It is expected to be a fast growing market. A recent study estimated the Community market for such products and services over the next ten years at £860 billion. The introduction of clean technology offers prospects for substantial savings for industry while helping the environment. Clean technology incorporating clean production techniques involves less energy, less raw materials, less waste and therefore less costs.

These are some of the potential areas of benefit but we cannot ignore the fact that compliance with increasing levels of environmental protection will involve substantial cost increases for industry in new capital equipment, training for new work practices and to a degree alternative raw materials and inputs. It is fully recognised that industry has to accept the need for continued and increasing measures to safeguard and enhance the environment. If these measures apply all over the Community, creating a level playing field, loss of competitiveness with industry in other member states need not be an issue, but industry needs time to plan and adapt to new measures By being allowed time to identify areas for improvement and incorporating these into future product design and investment plans industry can seek the most efficient solutions and incorporate them with less disruption to operations. This requries an active anticipatory approach by industry rather than waiting to have regulatory requirments imposed by the public authorities.

The EC Commission in its proposals relating to industry and the environment has proposed to follow four general principles — predictability, flexibility, intergration and cost effectiveness or the least cost solution.

Predictability will avoid frequent change of directions in environmental regulatory requirements. This will be effected by the establishment of long term environmental objectives for industry within suitable time frames and early and continuing constructive dialogue between the environmental authorities and industry.

Flexibility could include the question of incentives or voluntary action to achieve the set goals as well as taking into account the diverse environmental needs in different parts of the Community.

The ability of the Community industry to maintain its position on open and competitive markets while achieving a high, balanced and, in the longer term, environmentally sustainable degree of development within the Community will require the successful integration of requirements for industrial competitiveness and protection of the environment.

It should go without saying that the measures to address a particular environmental problem should be cost effective and be on the basis of the least cost solution which is that, subject to basic requirements relating to safety and health being met, the best combination of the level of protection and its cost — or, to put it more bluntly, value for money — is selected. This will require much better information linkages between environmental data or ecological balance sheets and the economic data relating to industry and improved methods for assessing the potential environmental benefits as compared with the costs.

There were also concerns relating to the effect on intra Community trade of member states going alone in setting more exacting requirements and the particular problems of small and medium sized industries and the less developed regions in the Community in having to meet more rigorous environmental standards. All these matters were addressed initially by the EC Council of Ministers of Industry in November last but the Council next week, which I will attend, will consider how these issues may be further developed.

The more detailed emphasis proposed will be a strengthened in-depth dialogue with industry in the not mutually exclusive issues of environmental protection and industrial competitiveness so as to ensure the right balance between cost and benefit but taking into account continuing technological developments. This dialogue should enable industry to participate more efficiently in the efforts to move towards sustainable development — that is the process through which we can meet the needs and aspirations of people today without undermining the ability of future generations to meet theirs.

Recognising the special needs of small and medium sized industries who have problems in combining industrial competitiveness and environmental protection, consultancy service and information programmes will be provided to help them with their enviormental responsibilities. Industry will also be helped to take part in work promoting environmentally sound products. An adequate information base on the growth potential of environmental industries, both on the markets for end-of-pipe technology and for clean technologies will be developed.

Economic growth itself offers the greatest opportunity for alleviating poverty and for protecting the environment and I will conclude by recalling what the Taoiseach said when launching the Green 2000 Advisory Group Report: "the maintenance of our high quality environment is a key ingredient in allowing the economy to develop and generate high quality jobs now and in the future".

I want to thank the group for its excellent work.

I welcome the opportunity to say a few words on this worthwhile report. Like previous speakers, I congratulate those involved. I will be critical of some aspects of the report, not because of any lack of effort on the part of those who prepared it but because of the obvious lack of resources made available to them to do the job properly. I am critical of the report's treatment of the marine. While attention is paid to both aquaculture and inland fisheries. I suggest that the marine, generally is worthy of comprehensive examination, particularly in the context of the protection of the environment and how we can develop our potential in terms of economic growth and job opportunities.

I welcome the new public awareness of the need to protect our environment and to be leaders in the world in advancing new ideas and promoting a greater awareness of the need to improve standards in industry, waste disposal and so on. It is a credit to our younger generation that they have a greater awareness than, perhaps, did my generation. We can expect with confidence that our coming generations will see to it that Ireland will continue to play its part in the protection of the environment. The attention that is paid to waste disposal and keeping our streets clean, as well as the protection of the environment generally, is a very positive aspect of the attitude of our young people.

Very often those who promoted environmental awareness in the past were accused of living in a different world. They were told it was not possible to have economic growth and development while, at the same time, being conscious of our environment. That argument has proved to be false and it is now generally recognised, particularly here, that we should be creating wealth and jobs in areas where our environment can play an important role. People are fed up living in an unhealthy environment in crowded cities, with their lakes and rivers polluted. They want to visit places like Ireland for a vacation or short trip or, perhaps to live here or locate their businesses here. In that respect there are great opportunities for Ireland in the Europe of the future. It is recognised that we pay particular attention to the protection of the environment and that we live in a country which is envied by most Europeans in terms of a pleasant and healthy environment.

Unfortunately, I must criticise the Taoiseach's remarks in relation to the marine. If we are prepared to recognise areas of potential growth, it is unfortunate that groups who contribute much of their time to producing those reports are often starved of the necessary resources to make the report more comprehensive. While the members of the group are very fine highly professional people in their own areas of responsibility, such a group can often avail of outside expertise if the resources were provided. It is obvious this did not happen on this occasion.

I have been spokesman on the Marine for approximately three weeks but my preliminary examination of this subject suggests the enormous potential that exists in marine, not just in regard to fishing but also in sporting and tourism development. Unfortunately, in the past we have not paid sufficient attention to the marine and the potential for economic development and job creation in that area. One only has to look at our coastlines to recognise the scant attention that is paid to coastal erosion. For example, if one takes the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's constituency of Wicklow and south Dublin one can see the scandalous way in which coastal erosion is destroying that beautiful coatline. Despite repeated requests during the past 15 or 20 years absolutely nothing has been done to address that problem. This is one example of the lack of attention successive Governments paid to the marine and the potential that exists in places such as Wicklow and south Dublin for proper, controlled development that would create much needed jobs, enhance the environment and use a natural resource to its maximum.

It is unfortunate that we do not have sufficient resources to carry out the much needed work to eliminate this terrible coastal erosion we experience on an annual basis. How much longer must we wait? If we are to receive structural funding this is an ideal opportunity to use those funds to protect our valuable assets. We are an island nation within the European Community and this is one areas where we have an opportunity and the possibility to create jobs and encourage more people to visit Ireland and appreciate its beauty.

The area of recreation in the marine should be promoted. This could involve not only cruising and yachting but other water sports which would attract tourism as well as cater for our market. We are behind other countries in our development of marine associated recreation. A lack of facilities and no proper marketing leaves much to be desired but our attitude is reflected, unfortunately, in the Government's approach to a report such as this. Only two areas of the marine, inland fisheries and aquaculture — both extremely important — are commented on in a report consisting of approximately 380 pages. Those who may have thought in the past that there must be compromise when it came to economic development and the protection of the environment have been proved wrong. In fact, greater opportunities exist now for growth in employment and the economy in areas where we can provide attractions that other countries in the world cannot. People would be only too willing to come here and enjoy our improved environment and facilities. The spin-offs of that for our economy are enormous.

We must make up our minds whether we will lead the way within Europe by looking for improved standards. We must decide whether we will continue to destroy our rivers by pumping slurry into them and arguing that it is necessary to maintain a particular industry. What we do not recognise is the loss of opportunities as a result of that practice. When one looks at the recommendations contained in the inland fisheries section of the report, which the Minister said he wholeheartedly supports, one notices that the comments on waste disposal do not produce any new ideas or requests to examine other opportunities for the disposal of waste. On page 27 of the report there is a reference to the disposal of industrial waste through our ordinary sewerage system. This should be carefully examined because change is required in this regard. I question whether industrial waste should be disposed of through our ordinary sewerage systems. We seem to accept it as part of an ongoing process of disposal. The report states:

The introduction of environmentally sensitive management practices is recommended for the disposal of slurries, sludges and wastes to ensure minimal leaching to surface or groundwaters.

I support that aspiration but no mention is made of whether we should look at the constructed wetlands systems for sewage and sludge disposal which, I understand, is being examined closely in the United States. As a member of a local authority, I am aware that the traditional method of disposal of waste was always through outfall systems into our seas. We never bothered to examine in any great detail the potential of any alternative system. In many cases, raw sewage was pumped into our seas for years. Many of our sewerage systems are outdated and certainly would not be an example to our European partners.

While I admit some improvements in waste disposal have been made through the use of Structural Funds, we still have a long way to go. If we invest Structural Funds in this area, they in turn will generate spin-off effects for industries associated with our waters and create greater job opportunities for our people. We must actively consider the way in which we spend Structural Funds.

The marine area is not developed to its full potential. Recent figures show that for every one job at sea there is one job ashore which compares unfavourably with other European countries where for every one job at sea there are eight jobs ashore. The area of processing here has not been fully developed because the marine has been the Cinderella of Government policy for far too long. We have not considered the real opportunities for employment in the important area of the marine.

I note from the report that there are some 2,600 people employed in the aquaculture industry at present and that many of those jobs are located in isolated coastal regions. Opportunities for employment in that industry would be very slim if that important industry had not been developed. I do not need to tell the House how important it is to retain people in those regions rather than force them to move to our towns and cities and create greater expense in respect of infrastructure, housing and so on. We must consider the various opportunities that exist for the development of industry in those isolated regions, particularly along the western coastline and so on. The development of our aquaculture and fishing industries would cater for the people of those regions. In the inland fisheries areas also there are great opportunities for the creation of jobs in isolated areas.

However, have we the commitment to develop those areas? Are we prepared to invest our resources, make the necessary plans and lead the way in setting new standards throughout Europe? We should not always just implement directives handed down by others. We should set new standards for the future. We have the people, the expertise and we can create greater expertise through research in our third level colleges. We have a highly educated and intelligent younger generation who should be encouraged to develop new systems to improve standards and from a selfish point of view that would be to our advantage because we have the natural resources.

It is not possible to cover a report of this size in the short time available. I am pleased the House found time to debate the report and it is a new beginning in terms of the attitude of elected representatives who have put forward proposals and suggestions in regard to the protection of the environment and have considered the opportunities such protection would provide. I hope this report, like so many others, will not lie for years gathering dust on the shelves of various Departments. The Structural Funds, if used properly, could be very beneficial to the future of the marine.

I hope the Government will consider the growth opportunities in that area, will be courageous in its decision-making and recognise that our existing legislation needs updating. I hope it will also recognise that new improved methods and systems are being introduced on an annual or, indeed, daily basis in the marine area. We should develop this area, which is a worthwhile asset, to its maximum in order to maximise the job opportunities there. As I stated, the statistics show that only one job exists onshore for every one job at sea and hopefully this position will change soon with the development of our fishing industry, as happened in the agricultural industry when we stopped exporting our cattle on the hoof and developed our processing industry. If we avail of present opportunities hopefully we can achieve the same results in a more professional way in the fishing industry. This is particularly important for the coastal, isolated areas where no other opportunities exist for employment. I hope we will make a genuine effort to allow people make a living is their own area and contribute to the growth of our economy rather than being forced to move to the cities to secure employment.

I am glad to have the opportunity to join in this important debate. A substantial part of the report of the Green 2000 Advisory Group covers areas which are dealt with by my Department — I refer particularly to the transport, energy and mining sectors — and it is of particular interest to me on that account.

Before proceeding to deal with the various issues and recommendations contained in the report, I would like to take this opportunity to touch briefly on the importance of the environment in the development of policy within my Department.

The integration of environmental consideration in the formulation and implementation of our economic and sectoral policies is now acknowledged to be central to the sustainable development of our economy. We are now more conscious than ever that the notion of environmental protection is not something which can simply be sacrificed on the altar of economic progress. On the contrary, the protection of the environment makes excellent economic sense for this country. Sustainable economic development and environmental protection can and, indeed, must go hand in hand. The challenge facing my Department is to ensure that in formulating and implementing effective policies in the areas of transport, energy and mining, every account is taken of the central role of the environment.

The Green 2000 report, in examining the transport infrastructure, rightly draws attention to the importance of ensuring that our internal transport infrastructure is as efficient as possible, given its critical role in the national economy. Transport is vital to the distribution of goods and services, to trade and to regional and social development. As an island and as a country which must export in order to prosper, we are all acutely aware of this. The report recognises that road transport will be the principal mode road transport in Ireland for the foreseeable future and its recommendations are primarily concerned with this area.

My Department will, in co-operation with the Department of the Environment, strive to promote a transport policy which satisfies the requirements of economic and social development and which equally respects and protects the environment.

In the area of urban transport, for example, I will ensure that the proper emphasis is placed on the need to encourage energy saving; on the promotion of efficient collective/public transport systems and the introduction of measures to encourage a shift from cars to public transport in order to reduce the impact of motorised traffic on our cities.

Under the Programme for a Partnership Government we have placed a new emphasis on the need for increased priority for public transport in Dublin city. In this context, the Government is committed to implementing the strategy of the Dublin Transportation Initiative which contains radical proposals for enhanced commuter transport services, including bus and light rail options, extended DART and upgraded rail commuter services — all directed towards resolving the traffic congestion and transport problems of the greater Dublin area.

Together with my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, I will be pursuing as a priority issue the matter of securing significant levels of EC funding to facilitate the implementation of the public transport elements of the Dublin Transportation Initiative.

One of the proposals contained in the interim report of the Dublin Transportation Initiative concerned the establishment of "quality bus corridors" along a number of routes. The "quality bus" concept is based on the provision of reliable, frequent and customer oriented bus based transportation services, along a network of corridors, with a high level of traffic priority, new vehicles, significantly improved bus shelters, passenger information, etc. I was involved in the launch of the first of these services some weeks ago and I am confident that it, and its successors, will prove effective in encouraging commuters to switch from private cars to public transport in Dublin.

Energy and transport are, of course, naturally interlinked — but the energy sector itself is a very broad area — ranging as it does from transport to electricity generation to offshore exploration. Clearly, as an island country, security of supply and diversity of fuels are of critical importance to our economy. We are also heavily dependent on imports to meet our energy requirements. The Green 2000 report, in its examination of the energy sector, recognises that the challenge facing us in this key area for the national economy is to ensure that economic growth, efficient and secure energy supplies and a clean environment are compatible objectives.

The strategies put forward by the report as a means of meeting that challenge mirror to a large extent those identified at the level of the European Community — an improvement in energy efficiency and conservation, together with a movement to a less carbon intensive energy structure including, in particular, renewable energy options.

The report emphasises the need for a vigorous policy of energy conservation and efficiency as a means of reducing our energy requirements. The concept of energy efficiency and conservation has been central to energy policy in Ireland for some considerable time now. There is, nevertheless, room for the achievement of further substantial energy savings through the promotion of conservation policies.

The Partnership Programme for Government demonstrates clearly that conservation will continue to be central to the Government's energy policy and will be promoted in all sectors of the economy. With a view to limiting the requirement to invest in new electricity generating capacity, there will be a new drive towards the greater use of combined heat and power, particularly in hospitals and other health care institutions.

Steps will also be taken to introduce the production of electricity from municipal waste. It would be my intention that such plants would be located in such a manner that the by-product heat can be used effectively, for example, in meeting the heating requirements of local authority housing.

Particular care will be exercised in relation to the environment through the minimisation of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and sulphur emissions in industry and electricity generation.

The Government will also seek to take advantage of improvements in energy technologies, particularly in relation to peat and coal gasification, in order to ensure that these fuels can be used more efficiently, both in terms of energy production and also in terms of a reduced effect on the environment.

The energy conservation programme of my Department is intended to encourage the efficient use of all forms of energy, in all sectors of the economy, in order to conserve scarce resources, to achieve financial savings and to protect the environment.

My Department's role in this area is primarily educational — to explain the value of energy conservation and to seek to persuade energy consumers to act accordingly. Much of the energy savings which are possible will be realised through individual actions and improved practices. To this end, education and awareness campaigns, administered by EOLAS, and aimed at specific sectors of the economy, are an important feature of my Department's conservation programme.

The EC "SAVE" programme is providing funding towards the development of an education pack for secondary schools. It is proposed to produce 2,000 packages for use in secondary schools in Ireland in the academic year 1993-94.

These examples give a flavour of the wider conservation programme being run by my Department. I also want to see the utility companies taking a greater part in the promotion of energy conservation. Given that one-third of Ireland's primary energy requirement is used in electricity generation, the adoption by the ESB of an aggressive approach towards demand side management must be welcomed in this context. Deputies will be familiar with the public side of this strategy through the ESB's media campaign to promote efficient electricity use throughout the economy.

The Green 2000 report emphasises also the need to increase the contribution of renewable energy to energy supply. An example of the potential in this area is the Bellacorick wind farm in County Mayo which became fully operational in late 1992. It will produce about 17 million units of electricity per annum which will be fed into the national grid through the nearby ESB power station. I will be encouraging further such initiatives in the area of alternative environmentally-friendly energy resources, including fast growing forestry or biomass, small hydroelectric stations and wave energy.

The Green 2000 report deals in some detail with the mining industry. It is my belief that the very significant potential contribution of our mineral resources to the national job and wealth creation effort should be exploited to the full. However, this must be done in a way which is compatible with the needs of the environment. The bottom line is that no mining project will be allowed unless it can be clearly demonstrated through the environmental impact assessment process that it is environmentally acceptable.

I am gratified that the report makes a point of endorsing the criteria used by my Department for setting appropriate general standards for mining environmental impact statements. I fully agree with its conclusion that mine developments should be considered on their individual merits through the local authority planning process and that decisions on the relative merits of tourism and mineral extraction in particular areas should be made only after considering the full facts and after exploring the potential for synergy between the two activities.

The specific recommendations on mining in the report represent a sensible, pragmatic basis on which to balance the needs of job creation and environment protection. I agree that a code of environmental practice should be incorporated into the prospecting licence system and I will take steps, in consultation with the industry, to do this.

My Department will discuss with the industry the recommendations that an inventory of old mine sites be prepared together with proposals for reclamation where necessary. I would agree, however, that further research may be warranted on some problems and that this will of necessity be directed towards identifying low cost solutions, and especially ones which minimise long term costs.

Many of the other recommendations are already in place. Thorough monitoring as envisaged by the Green 2000 group is and will continue to be an essential prerequisite for approval of new developments. Detailed, costed and funded closure plans are already an integral part of all development approvals. We do, however, need to be careful in this area. These are minerals which are being developed on behalf of the State. In many cases the full detail of closure arrangements are best settled following a period of actual production. We must allow sufficient flexibility to the developer to ensure that where a development is environmentally acceptable it is not jeopardised by unreasonable demands.

I will continue, as recommended in the report, to strongly encourage developers to undertake genuinely consultative scoping as the first stage of environmental impact assessment and to adopt the most open attitude possible to their operations, including increased access of information to the public. There is no doubt that there are many real fears in local communities about the possible impact of mining. It is only through a genuine dialogue with the public and a willingness on the part of the industry to face up to and address past mistakes that we can develop an environmentally acceptable industry valued for its contribution to the economy.

If and when offshore development becomes a reality, clear procedures and standards for authorising offshore mineral extraction will apply. Only methods which minimise the impact on marine life will be allowed. Extraction from beaches or within 2 kilometres of the shoreline will not be permitted unless there are large economic benefits and it can be clearly demonstrated that there will be no significant adverse effects.

In conclusion, I would like to join in the welcome for this report and to congratulate all those involved in its preparation. It is a timely contribution to the development, not only of environmental policy, but of policy in all sectors of the economy. I look forward to joining with my colleagues in Government in working towards the implementation of the report's recommendations.

Deputy Bruton referred to the Helsinki and Sofia Protocols. In accordance with the environment action programme, Government Departments are arranging for ratification of these Protocols. The Minister for the Environment will shortly publish the Government's strategy on climate change — he will consult with all the relevant Departments in so doing — and outline a comprehensive approach to emissions of sulphur, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. When Deputy Bruton referred to the costs of implementing the Helsinki and Sofia Protocols on the control of sulphur and nitrogen emissions I think he assumed that we were already participants in these Protocols. This is not yet the case. He also said that the controls on sulphur emissions could lead to increased carbon dioxide emissions and problems in relation to climate changes. It is important to emphasise that the Minister for the Environment has yet to come forward with comprehensive proposals, which will deal with the fears expressed by the Deputy.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I congratulate the members who gave of their time to produce this report. I regret that the advisory group did not get the resources which it needed as this led to limitations being placed on its work and on this report.

Approximately 30 years ago a woman named Rachael Carson changed the way in which the world looked at the environment. She raised the possibility of the world having what she called silent spring without a bird song, one year if we did not take action on the environment. In the intervening years the environment has become an international issue, constantly fuelled by the concerns of women in particular. Obviously women and men share many concerns about the environment, but women have been very active in raising awareness of environmental issues and have been to the fore in many environmental groups. A survey published this week shows that women rightly place the issue of saving the environment at the top of their priorities. As a founder member of the Irish women's environmental network, I welcome the opportunity to comment on this report.

There is no doubt that we have seen the effects of environmental carelessness. People in this country and elsewhere have not liked these effects. Three or four years ago Irish mothers were outraged to find that their children were swimming in untreated sewage during their summer holidays. It was mothers, carers and concerned citizens who led the vanguard of protest about smog levels in our capital city, smog which confined the old and asthmatic at home, which made life miserable for students cycling to college and which forced parents to keep their children out of playgrounds and off the streets. Happily, action has been taken on this area. This is what this report is all about. In order to bring about change we need strong initiatives on and prioritisation of this issue by the Government.

I welcome the points outlined by the Taoiseach in his speech this morning. If the measures he outlined are put into action I have no doubt that they will make a considerable difference. However, I worry whether these recommendations will be given the priority they so clearly deserve. Parents are worried that their children will get skin cancer as a result of the growing hole in the ozone layer. People have many concerns about environmental issues which affect their health and day-to-day functioning. If the action recommended in many chapters of the report is implemented some of these worries can be put to rest in the not too distant future.

I wish to refer to the origins of the report. When Ireland held the Presidency of the EC the then Taoiseach, Mr. Haughey, made great play of the fact that it would be a green Presidency. However, the plans which emerged were less than radical and little money was allocated to the protection of our wonderful environment which as Deputy Doyle said, we have more by luck than by planning. Much planning will be needed if we are to protect our environment in the future.

Who will own this report? Who is going to promote it? Who will fight for the sub-clauses within it? Who will ensure that the recommendations are translated into policy and action? I would be astonished if this report were to become the environmental bible of the Government. I would be happy but astonished if this were the case. I hope I am proven wrong in this regard. I know full well that Fianna Fáil is very prolific when it comes to setting up study groups and commissioning reports, but it is another story when it comes to translating recommendations into policy and legislation. This is the problem. I bet that 90 per cent of the report's recommendations will not be implemented or begin to be implemented during the lifetime of the Government. This report will probably be used as a baseline checklist of what has not happened and what ought to happen in the next few years.

I know the members of the advisory group who devoted their time and energy to the formulation of this report were highly professional and committed. I am not sure that the time they invested in crafting the report was time well spent. I believe the time was idealistically spent, which is very important. I remind the House that we had a previous glossy environmental action plan. We have not seen in recent months any substantive action or policy laid down which has improved on the legislative position in regard to the environment. It would be unrealistic to suppose that this heavy tome of very worthy aspirations will infuse Government consciousness with any enthusiasm for change. I have already made the point that the advisory group was underresourced. What hope does this hold out for change? We cannot afford to have slow movement on the environment.

We cannot let environmental issues be hived off into one area of Government thinking. The report, under the heading "Incentive-driven Industrial Development Policies", states that it should be in the automatic self-interest of producers and customers to cherish and conserve their environment endowment. It goes on to state that achieving this entails understanding the incentives which lead them to do otherwise now and then designing and implementing a combination of carrots — positive incentives — and sticks — negative incentives — which move behaviour in this direction. The tax and grant provisions in the annual budget are especially influential in this regard. The concept of green budgeting, for example, lower taxes on environmentally positive behaviour and higher on the converse should be an integral part of the budgetary process. In many cases this can be implemented at no net expense to the Exchequer. Fine Gael would not have any disagreement with such a policy; I do not think any party which claims to have a sense of environmental responsibility could disagree with such a policy.

However, when one looks at the recent budget one does not see such thinking reflected in it. Is there any evidence of environmental concern in the Government's most recent budget? What I find scandalous about the omission of environmental matters from the recent budget is that Fianna Fáil had tested this budgetary approach and had claimed a huge success rate for it. This was when unleaded petrol was priced more cheaply than leaded petrol. If we had coherence in our environmental policy making, which this report stresses is important, the policy of pricing fuels to encourage people to use unleaded petrol should have been extended by now. The Government should have acknowledged the lessons learned and developed from there. This has not been the case. Why has the Government not learned this lesson?

One of the reasons is that the environment and environmental issues have, unfortunately, moved off the front pages. They will reappear strongly but at present they do not appear to constitue a huge populist issue. The Government, as it often does, leads from behind, knowing that the trends do not prevail, which is perhaps why the advisory group was not allocated the type of resourcing it should have been given. We really must endeavour to consciously develop an ongoing commitment so that the type of initiative taken before can be repeated again and again. Perhaps, in next year's budget we may see the type of measures about which I speak that will encourage our industrialists and industry and reward them on making an effort to achieve clean production, undertake environmental impact studies and so on. That type of recognition is essential.

We cannot merely adopt stop-gap measures to counter emerging problems. The report rightly acknowledges that some progress has been made — for example, in the treatment of sewage being released into the sea. Nonetheless, it is worth recalling that such progress was media driven. Until television programmes nightly broadcast stories of the nastiness of swimming in Dublin Bay there was not much action taken, but after the negative publicity we did see action. Such action cannot always be post factum. This is the critical point. We cannot always sweep up afterwards, always be in a fire brigade mode, trying to avert a disaster which has already occurred, endeavouring to restock rivers after scores of dead fish have been buried. The protection of the environment cannot be assured in that manner, post factum, and by way of an incoherent set of reactive measures. I contend that is dangerous national irresponsibility.

We have here a lot of self-serving clichés. For example, we talk about our greatest asset being our young people. Yet we still labour under a 1908 Juvenile Justice Act while the Child Care Act, 1991, still awaits implementation, as we observed so graphically this week. So much for one of our clichés about children being our greatest asset; but we do very little about providing adequate child care, allocating resources or indeed even implementing existing legislation.

We talk about our environment but we do not really have a coherent, national plan for its preservation and development. I hope this report will begin to move us toward the sort of national plan so badly needed. The matter of environmental protection must be tackled immediately. Obviously, what is needed is economic growth and envionmental protection running hand-in-hand. There is no doubt but that too often in the past they were perceived as opposites or irreconcilable, which is clearly not the case.

I welcome the initiative on the part of the Minister of State at the Office of the Tánaiste and Department of Finance, Deputy Eithne Fitzgerald, on including representatives of environmental groups on the National Economic and Social Forum. That is important and a step in the right direction. I should like to pay tribute also to the marvellous work undertaken by many non-governmental organisations on environmental awareness. I would urge Government support for them. The work they undertake is extremely important. They often experience great difficulty in obtaining the type of resources they need in order to develop. They have done marvellous work in educating people on the environment. I should like to see greater Government leadership in this area.

The overall question of educating the public on environmental issues has a long way to go. Here I would pay great tribute to our schools. Our children are receiving much more information and being made more aware generally of environmental matters than was the case in previous generations. The tragedy is that while they return from school armed with greater information, knowing what should be done — for example, on recycling — they find within their local areas that that type of recycling has not been put in place. That is because we have not got the speed of implementation and action needed in relation to these national schemes on, for instance, the management of waste. We must correct that imbalance obtaining. I welcome the type of information with which children are being furnished and their input into environmental matters. The Government must re-examine the question of general environmental awareness, perhaps devloping additional information campaigns targeted at individuals and households, in addition to the more global and sectoral issues mentioned in this report.

We live in critical times in regard to our environment. I turn now to the Cohesion and Structural Funds, in particular the £8 billion to be allocated to this country over the next few years with which many projects will be developed. If the expenditure of this sum is well managed at national and regional levels, hopefully it will lead to economic improvements. But it will be critical that such schemes and projects be accompanied by a strong environmental awareness, by environmentally "proofing" how this money is spent. For example, in the areas with which I am most familiar — equality — we talk about equality proofing. I contend that, along with that, must go environmental proofing. Now is the appropriate time to do this. If we engage in activity such as that mentioned in some earlier comments in this debate, then we shall ensure that we achieve this balance between economic development and environmental protection.

I now quote from chapter 2 of the general conclusions of the group under the heading "State of the Environment" on page 11 of this report:

Some improvement has occurred in certain areas e.g. reduction of the extent of gross fresh water pollution; improvement in air quality in Dublin; the protection of some natural habitats; improvement of some bathing waters and increased public awareness. But the natural environment has shown steady deterioration in some key areas for example, increase in moderately polluted river length; decline in lake water quality. Increase in ground water contamination in certain areas; loss of natural habitats and species diversity, and reduction in landscape quality.

That is very serious and makes very disturbing reading. There can be no complacency about it. There is need for making this issue an absolute priority, putting it right at the top of the national agenda, for each Government Department to treat it as a priority, setting targets for implementation of the recommendations of this report so that before the year 2000 they are translated in a meaningful way into Government action, planning and policy.

I should say I wish to share my time with Deputy Upton.

Environmental issues and environmental protection are sometimes falsely seen as a luxury when set against the hard light of economic realities. The argument that a level of environmental damage is an inevitable consequence of industrial and other development is fundamentally flawed. The fact is that we live and prosper from the environment we have inherited. In agriculture, tourism, fishing, forestry, we will depend more than ever in coming years on protecting that environment and refusing any apparent short term attractions that can be offered by allowing certain types of developments that can damage the environment, we should note that the quality of our environment is a key factor in the quality of life argument that can encourage the senior staff of many industries to locate here. Sometimes we ignore the fact that quality of life and of the environment within a country can be just as important and attractive to senior executives of multinational companies, for example, as other factors in the equation attracting them to locate in a country such as ours. The IDA now recognises that fact.

There is a salutary lesson to be learned from the experience of Russia and other ex-Communist countries where wanton damage to rivers and lakes was tolerated in pursuit of production at all costs. The end result, now plain for all to see, is the vast price to be paid for repairing the damage and horrific economic as well as ecological consequences.

In Ireland we have an environment which has not been damaged beyond the point of recovery. We can build a model of sustainable economic growth and development by conserving our environment and repairing any damage already done. If we take this approach we can then with confidence and profit approach the marketing of, for example, our agricultural and tourism industries, but let us not be fooled that we can live on the image of a green island and at the same time wantonly continue to damage the environment. The marketing efforts of Bord Fáilte in countries such as Germany will be set at naught if, when German tourists visit this country, we are more than careless in regard to what we have to offer in terms of the environment.

There is a slogan of the international environmental movement which states "think globally and act locally". Of all the public policy issues where we have the capacity in our own hands to act this is the most significant. I would like to mention a few specific matters today.

The greater Dublin area is currently facing what I consider to be environmental vandalism of the worst type as certain Dublin county councillors continue their attempt to rezone for housing and industry large stretches of what remains of the green belt around Dublin. Despite one recent dramatic failure, due to an alert public opinion and the fact that the media highlighted the case very expertly, many rezonings have occurred during the past year in County Dublin to the benefit of a few at the cost of permanent damage to the natural environment in many parts of the county where a substantial proportion of the total population of this State live.

I cite the Liffey Valley in my own constituency as an example. This is a unique river valley, even in European terms. Miraculously, it has remained relatively untouched until now offering the most exciting possibilities for tourism and amenity developments for all of the west side of Dublin. However, the local community have to engage in a continuous around the clock campaign to try to halt the tidal wave of rezonings which threatens to engulf the valley. I am glad to say that some rezonings have been stopped but, unfortunately, in areas such as Laraghcon on the steep northern bank of the valley there is a proposed rezoning which could see hundreds of houses on one of the most beautiful and sensitive parts of the valley. Members of this House have a duty to engage in dialogue with their party's county councillors who are engaging in this act of vandalism against the environment of County Dublin.

Further south of Lucan extensive stud farms and other lands have also been rezoned regardless of the fact that there is an excess of zoned land already available in the Dublin area serviced at substantial public expense. If these proposals are not reversed the loss will not just be to the environment of Dublin but, more importantly, to the future growth of the tourism industry and all the potential employment that could offer. The councillors involved are being extremely shortsighted.

Dublin also faces a critical situation in relation to waste disposal. Instead of placing our faith in a continued policy of landfill dumping with all its potential for ecological damage we should be finding new ways of tackling this issue. First, there should be a serious policy of waste reduction at source through incentives and education, if possible, but also, if necessary, imposed by law which will probably be necessary due to the fact that common European standards, which will apply to Ireland and other EC states in the near future, are in the pipeline. I doubt if there is anyone who has come out of a supermarket staggering under the weight of bags and packages who does not feel that there is an excess of packaging material and that, with the co-operation of the major supermarkets, this could be significantly reduced.

Second, we need a massive programme of recycling. All we have at the moment in the greater Dublin area are limited pilot schemes all of which are very valuable but a mere fraction of what is required. Recycling also offers significant possibilities for job creation. This is a policy which would be widely welcomed by the public who, as I said, are exasperated by the mountains of waste generated at present.

Our rates of recycling, even of comparatively easy materials for which there is a proven market, such as glass, are pathetic by international standards — a mere 19 per cent for glass against a European average of 43 per cent. There is great scope for separating organic waste for compost production as has been done with remarkable success elsewhere and with profitable results. For example, one large community in Connecticut imposed a mandatory recycling programme in order to cut waste costs and found in two years a 65 per cent reduction in landfill needs. Our targets in this area are far too low at the moment.

I am an accountant by profession and my training was based on the traditional notions of profit and loss stated in raw figures on a balance sheet. Today many societies, even advanced corporations, are taking a more creative approach and are seeking a more balanced picture of economic costs that includes an environmental audit in relation to energy costs and raw materials use.

California gives positive environmental credits which may be quoted as part of a company's assets. The hallmark of all modern economies is their capacity to incorporate these considerations. In fact, environmental management is a rapidly growing employment sector in its own right, particularly in water management and treatment and in pollution control, where in the Ruhr Valley 100,000 jobs were created. There is considerable scope for job creation here along the same lines.

I firmly believe that we should go down the road of environmental protection and repair our assets which have, unfortunately, already been damaged. We are dealing with precious resources as vital to us as gold, diamonds or oil. Every development has to have its effect on the environment closely monitored. What is the point, for example, of huge increases in sheep numbers if over-grazing devastates the soil? Should we not take advantage of the potential of wind energy if it can provide 7 per cent of our energy needs as suggested in the report? Again, it would have a high employment content.

There is a wealth of ideas and programmes in this report. It deserves intensive study and the House should be grateful to its authors for the effort put into its compilation and for the creative way in which they approached their task.

Many people in this country recognise that our environment is still relatively unspoiled. We are interested in projecting a green image but in order to sustain this image we must conserve and have respect for our environment. At this stage our children are more aware of this than the rest of us. Indeed, it is heartening that so many children care about the environment. As politicians we should actively encourage this.

Once upon a time Ireland's figures in regard to tree planting were among the highest in Europe but today they are among the lowest. In regard to the process of reafforestation being undertaken at present the vast bulk of the trees being planted are conifers. With a few minor changes in policy we could achieve a balance between the need to grow conifers for profit and the need to grow hardwoods. Sometimes on wood products imported from the tropics we see labels indicating that the timber was grown in managed timber farms but we have our own native hardwoods and if we had a programme which considered the long term investment in native hardwoods a suitable avenue of investment, we could be self-sufficient in hardwood timbers and our contribution to the damage of the international environment would be strictly limited. I believe there is a public will to support environmental protection and that this is not inconsistent with economic growth. In fact we can create a great deal of economic growth by the intelligent use and conservation of our environment.

I thank the Minister for sharing her time, and giving me the opportunity to speak. This report is to be welcomed. It contains many useful ideas on a very important topic. However much of its content is aspirational. It is very short on detail as to how the objectives outlined in it will be realised. In addition there is very little in it on the cost of realising those objectives; in other words the brass tacks are not mentioned.

It is difficult to disagree with anything in the report. It is bland and aspirational. It is a fine example of this modern "report speak". I suspect somebody in an office has a series of terms and phrases on computer and by banging the correct key, a series of phrases comes up on the screen. To illustrate this I have selected at random pages 32 and 33. Recommendation 7.2 states "companies and sectors should be encouraged and facilitated"; in recommendation 7.3, the word "encouraged" comes up again, but in recommendation 7.4 there is a slight change as it states "the Government should actively promote", while recommendation 7.5 talks about "principal objectives" and "adequate provision". Paragraph 1 of that recommendation refers to "increased urgency" and paragraph 2 refers to "clear site selection", which is a specific in a vague sort of way. In recommendation 7.6 it states "all efforts should be made to ensure that the agency be established as soon as possible and is properly resourced". The words "as soon as possible" are used again further down page 33. The terminology is in keeping with what is found in modern reports but the real problems occur when we get down to the nitty gritty.

I understand the report recommends that there should be wide consultation with the various interest groups but it does not appear that the people who generated the report engaged in widespread consultation. A total of 32 organisations made submissions to the advisory group but the report does not say to what extent they engaged in dialogue with those who made submissions. Certainly some organisations are conspicuous by their absence. It does not appear that Bord Fáilte was consulted; neither was the Wildlife Advisory Council or the National Regional Association of Game Councils. These are imprtant organisations and it would certainly not have done any harm to have taken account of their views on the environment.

The real difficulty with reports of this kind is when you get down to the nitty gritty of implementing their recommendations and aspirations. That is where the problems begin. Ultimately you have to provide the money to do so and at that stage people begin to think again and have reservations and believe that somebody else should pay. We in this country are great at spending money in an aspirational way. I took to wondering how much money would be spent in the course of a week if all the money that was called for by politicians in statements and radio interviews during that week were added up. It would be a useful service if somebody announced how much it amounted to. That would be very useful information because the next week we could call back the people who proposed the expenditure and ask them how they proposed to generate the money. I believe for the most part the answer would be: "take it from tax or from somebody else who does not vote for me or whom I do not represent".

I will now deal with some specific areas mentioned in the report. The proposals in relation to organic farming are very weak. There is considerable scope to do a great deal more than is indicated. It also talks about environmentally friendly farming practices, which is very desirable. It then refers to talk about the use of fertilisers, changes in land use and changes in the use of chemicals in agriculture. Things get difficult when we get down to the nitty gritty as to how these changes should be implemented and then policed. Yesterday we spent a good part of the time discussing how we could control the abuse of angel dust. The control of pesticides is another area where we are fairly lax and there is no obligation on the people who use pesticides to know anything about the product; indeed they are not even obliged to read the label or follow the manufacturer's instructions. When people abuse pesticides, as in the recent past, no prosecutions followed in spite of the fact that young children were hospitalised as a result. You run into problems when you get down to brass tacks. The various lobby groups lobby us strongly.

The control of farmyard waste is dealt with in the report. If one drives from here to Galway, Limerick or Kerry, in three or four places one's senses will be assailed by a gas which is rich in hydrogen sulphide, ammonia and other toxic waste products. These gases emitted into the atmosphere must prove curious for tourists who have come to our wholesome environment from places like Germany. That is the way we are and if one tries to change that one runs into serious trouble.

In the report we are committed to enhancing our image as producers of high quality food. At the same time we have no food company which has the capacity to make an impact on the European food markets. That is the simple reality. Indeed we have no strategy as to how we could do that. If we wish to make an impact on the European food market we need to assemble companies which would have a turnover of the order of £2 billion or more. We are doing nothing about this and nobody seems to have the slightest interest in doing so. We produce reports that avoid mentioning this whole idea beyond making loose aspirational remarks about how nice it would be if this happened but nobody wants to know about the nitty gritty.

I wish to draw attention to the fact that the Wildlife Advisory Council was not consulted during the production of this report. That was an unfortunate error. I also understand that one of the wildlife agencies which we established some time ago has not met yet and I wonder why. I understand also there are proposals for amendments to the Wildlife Act which will require legislation but there seems to be difficulty in doing this. Various targets for tourism in the wildlife field are referred to in the report but if some of the targets which are outlined in it are realised — in other words, if in the order of 20,000 people come to this country to go shooting — there is a sequel in that we need to be much more vigorous as to how we manage our wildlife resources. If we do not take steps to organise that management process we will damage greatly this very valuable resource.

A report produced by John O'Connell, John Connolly and Mr. Burke of UCD indicates that field sports produce in the order of £50 million. This aspect of the environment and environmental tourism does not merit mention in the report. The National Association of Regional Game Councils was not consulted in the preparation of the report.

The report does not refer to the taxation of carbon. At this stage I do not want to get into the nitty gritty of proposals on carbon taxation. I have a certain regard for my political life and I have enough difficulties at present without getting into that matter. However, it cannot be avoided forever. I believe the Europeans will move to control and restrict the usage of carbon and if we cannot put forward line by line proposals in this regard perhaps we should begin to consider in broad terms ways of resolving the problem.

Deputy Doyle said that Sellafield does not warrant a mention in the report. However the fact that it is not referred to is probably welcome because it has become conspicuous by its absence, as many of us wish to be from time to time — indeed some of us have great difficulty in becoming conspicuous by our presence. We should be anxious to lead Europe in the protection of the environment. However, we are way behind our European partners and dragging our heels in this regard. It is in our interests to set the pace.

The Green 2000 report consists of many pages which I have not read — I do not know how many Deputies have read it. The reason I make this point is that we have established committees here in the last number of days which could fruitfully consider reports such as this, bring forward proposals and monitor the implementation of recommendations by Government. Unless Deputies receive resources to carry out research and the follow through necessary on such reports we may as well not produce reports at all. It is not good enough that reports simply become part of a feel good approach to issues whereby a group of experts is set to work to produce a report, it is debated here for a day and then put back on the shelf and forgotten about. I do not know whether that will be the net result of this debate. The principles in the report may be implemented some day because of the pressure of events outside this House and in the environment generally.

By ensuring a more efficient and effective resourcing of Deputies and the use of the committee system, desirable improvements in various areas of policy-making could be speeded-up — clearly the environmental aspect of policy-making needs to be seriously addressed. Even though this report is being debated today and we were given commitments from the Taoiseach this morning about the principles he supports in relation to the environment, yesterday these principles were breached by members of the Taoiseach's party. I am not making this point as a party political scoring point but to stress the need to ensure that in agreeing on principle to do things, even though pressure may be brought to bear by lobby groups, the principles are not forgotten and the action required by the most powerful groups pursued.

The Democratic Left Party was founded about a year ago. In our constitution we deliberately included a principle that part of the role we would seek to play in Irish life would be to incorporate ecological principles into social, economic and political decision-making. That is not a remarkable position to adopt but we are probably the only party that has incorporated that approach in its founding documents. Obviously, the fact that we are a new, young party makes it possible to do that. If other parties were to do so they would be required to rejig their constitutions, and I know parties generally favour leaving their constitutions as they are. When one starts looking at constitutions, redefining principles and values and so on, all sorts of problems arise — I speak with a degree of experience in this area.

The Democratic Left adopted this position because it was seen to be an important aspect of political development in Ireland and indeed globally, which would not have been dreamed of when Fianna Fáil or the Labour Party were founded. It was not a factor which anyone considered at that time. It was believed that world resources were infinite, that it would be impossible for the population of the world to use up the resources available to us and that the atmosphere of the world was capable of absorbing whatever was dumped into it. We now know that is not the case, that the earth is fragile and finite. We have to take very serious political decisions to ensure that it is in a better condition for future generations than it is at present. It is in that context that we consider this document today. It is easy for us to stand up and make these declarations but those principles must be applied in everyday political practice, whether in county councils, in the Dáil or wherever.

The attitude that one may do anything one wishes, whether it be building a factory, a sewage treatment plant or a housing estate, or undertake any technical or chemical process provided one cleans up afterwards, is no longer acceptable. Clearly the volume of waste produced, particularly in the developed world, is so huge that we simply cannot adopt such a position. We have to see how we can incorporate, as the Democratic Left is committed to doing, ecological principles into production. When planning the construction of sewage plants, which must be done, we should not be satisfied with primary or even secondary treatment of sewage, pumping the balance out to sea, whether it be half a mile or even a mile from the coast. The principle should be established that sewage plants should be tertiary treatment plants which, having treated human waste, pump only clean water back into the sea.

We should not adopt the position that X factories produce X amounts of toxic waste and that therefore we have to have a toxic incinerator. We must look at how we can ensure that factories producing toxic waste can reduce the amounts produced and at alternatives to the kind of basic raw materials they are using to produce the same product or even better products. We must consider how we can deal with domestic refuse, which of its nature will always be there. We must consider how to reduce the amount and ensure that organic waste is separated from the inorganic waste and how to ensure that the amount of plastic packaging used is reduced and organic wrapping used instead. We continue to use refuse trucks which simply dump everything into a hole in the ground, but there are refuse trucks which can separate organic from inorganic material. There are things that can be done even at that level which as yet we do not seem to have taken seriously on board. Deputy Upton talked about costs. Of course, there are costs; but we have to balance what it will cost today against what it will cost in terms of quality of life for us, our children and our grandchildren.

There is the global view and the local view. Clearly, the global view is what is primarily represented, or what sparked the production of this report. It was the Rio de Janeiro conference which decided that each country would produce its own strategy to deal with the problems which that conference identified. From the global view we have this local response to it. In that sense this is a valuable document which should not be debated here and then forgotten about. There must be a monitoring process into how its suggestions are put into place. Establishing the principles is one thing, but the practice may be another matter entirely.

The approach of incorporating ecological principles into economic social and political decision making fundamentally challenges the whole idea of the exploitation of resources and people. If we continue to assume that a market driven world will give us an ecologically sound world we are fooling ourselves. It just will not happen. A market driven world is driven by the use and exploitation of resources for the greater degree of profit that can be achieved. The development of technology is driven by this need to sell, the need to create in many respects demands by consumers, particularly for technologically developed products.

We have to face a very significant problem. The overwhelming population of this world does not have our standard of living or aspire to it. The exploitation of resources and people ensures that those within the developed world who have a certain level of wealth will be able to acquire more — I am not just talking about money or land but about the good things of life — and those who have nothing in the Third World are being driven to destroy their own environment by the need to survive. Deforestation and the turning of large tracts of land into desert is driven by people's need to survive. The issue is fundamental to the question of the exploitation of the globe and the incorporation of ecological principles into what we are doing.

Unless we address the question of exploitation that is implicit in a market driven economy we will not be able to seriously tackle the question of how this globe will survive into the next century, which is what this report is intended to chart the way towards. I am not arguing against markets per se; I am arguing against a global economy driven by markets. Markets have a significant role to play in identifying needs and demands, but if we allow those markets to drive the development of technology and the exploitation of resources we will not achieve even the minimal goals set forth in this document.

I will not go into a dissertation on the redistribution of wealth, but we cannot cod ourselves by assuming that simply because we adopt principles in relation to our island to make us environmentally aware, we will solve the problems of global warming or the depletion of resources. It requires a much more fundamental reappraisal of what we are about. The principles are fine, but the practice is something else. Practice at local level often runs contrary to the principle.

The Taoiseach stood up here this morning and listed 12 or 14 points which the Government accepts as valid and which will be incorporated in Government policy. I am pleased about that in so far as it goes. However, in Dublin County Council yesterday certain councillors decided to rezone a section of land in the Malahide area against the advice of management. The advice of management was that if they went ahead with this rezoning a serious sewage problem would arise in the Malahide estuary. That is a fact which can be established by analysis. It is not an opinion. If X houses are built on that site it will create X amount of sewage and the capacity of the system can only take so much. Therefore this sewage will go virtually raw into the Malahide estuary. That flies directly in the face of the principles enunciated here this morning by the Taoiseach. We should not simply speak here today on the basis that it makes us feel good that we have supported the principles that will make this a clean world, but then in our everyday political practice, in our county councils, residents' associations, political parties and so on, take decisions which will damage the environment.

I would draw a distinction between decisions which change the environment. There is no doubt that so long as human beings continue to exist on the face of the globe they will have an impact on changing the environment. As human beings we eat food and we produce sewage as a result, so we need sewage disposal facilities. We should be able to take decisions that ensure that the impact is not such that the environment, whether it be the global or the local environment, is not capable of absorbing it. A decision was taken yesterday in Dublin County Council, the effects of which the local environment will not be able to absorb. If we are serious here today, that decision should be reversed. I am not a member of Dublin County Council and I do not know how they would set about reversing that decision. I presume there will be all sorts of compensation claims and one, perhaps, from the landowner. The Minister of State at the Department of Social Welfare, Deputy Burton, is a member of Dublin County Council and would be better able to speak on this matter. We have to take this issue seriously and ensure that both our political and our economic practices are in consonance.

We have one of the lowest rates of usage of unleaded petrol in Europe. About 30 per cent of our petrol usage is unleaded while in excess of 80 per cent unleaded petrol is used in Germany. A greater differential could have been created in this year's budget to encourage the use of unleaded petrol or, indeed, the conversion of cars which can use only leaded petrol.

I hesitate to interrupt but unfortunately the time has expired.

You were so interested in what I had to say.

I am very pleased to hear that. Decisions in relation to the environment are political decisions. We must not allow economic choices to dominate when it is a matter of maintaining the quality of the environment and clearly we have to find a balance.

Finally — and I intend to come back to this point at some stage in the life of this Dáil — I wish to refer to the question of economic growth, how it is defined and why it is used as a measure of advancement in our society. It is deplorable that it is based purely on pounds, shillings and pence and does not take into account the social impact of growth or the effect of human beings. We need to redefine economic growth and we need to incorporate social as well as ecological principles into our definition of growth.

I take this opportunity to welcome the Green 2000 report which the Taoiseach launched on Friday 26 March last.

My Department will be examining the extent to which both the general as well as the specific recommendations relating to agriculture can be effectively adopted. We will also be examining how the recommendations relating to other sectors such as manufacturing industry, tourism, landscape protection and nature conservation may impact on the agriculture and food industry. Already, indeed, a number of the recommendations are being implemented through initiatives taking place at national and European Community level.

Many of the recommendations are addressed in the Programme for a Partnership Government 1993-1997. Specifically my Department is committed to: the introduction of an effective programme to protect the environment from pollution of agricultural origin and increased funding for an environmentally sensitive areas scheme, with particular emphasis on marginalised rural areas. In addition, on the forestry side, it is a priority that the development of that sector will be accompanied by the continued application of environmental criteria to allow forestry to expand without encroaching in any significant way on water and landscape amenities. Particular encouragement will be given to the planting of broad-leafed trees and emphasis will be given to the protection of trees and woodlands, especially the remaining oak forests. I give my personal commitment in that regard.

I look forward to working closely with the Minister for the Environment, whom the Taoiseach has asked to agree on an agenda with the relevant Ministers to promote greater integration of environmental considerations into their policy areas.

It is worth reflecting for a moment on the unprecedented change in Irish farming in the past 20 years. Prior to our membership of the European Community, Irish agriculture was based on extensive, mixed farming and traditional farming practices which had little or no negative effects on the environment.

When Ireland joined the European Community in 1973, the whole emphasis in the Common Agricultural Policy was on intensification of production and modernisation of farms. This, and the prospect of enhanced farm incomes, in turn called for improved technology, greater mechanisation, increased use of chemical fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides, accelerated drainage and reclamation of land and a switch from many traditional farming practices, for example from hay-making to silage.

Even so Ireland has fewer problems arising from non-sustainable systems of agriculture than practically any other EC country. As much as 93 per cent of our farmland is under grassland which in general is extensively stocked. We do of course have some problems of an environmental nature. The increased use of nitrogenous fertilisers has led to an increase in nitrate levels in certain water-courses. More intensive stockfarming has brought about excessive nutrient enrichment of waters, particularly by phosphates, with adverse effects on water quality and on the flora and fauna. Intensive grazing has brought with it the danger of soil erosion and irreversible change in the nature of plant life in some areas of the country. A number of the problems are already being addressed, under the operational programme for the control of farmyard pollution. The pilot environmentally sensitive areas (ESA) scheme is also showing the way forward in the two areas in which it operates. More remains to be done.

The recognition in the Common Agricultural Policy reforms of the dual role of the farmer both as a producer of food and a protector of the environment provides the opportunity to give a renewed impetus to meeting environmental concerns in the agriculture area. The revised Common Agricultural Policy support arrangements give encouragement to extensification of production with the object of reducing surplus output and at the same time contributing to an environmentally sustainable form of agricultural production and to food quality.

Under the Common Agricultural Policy reforms production constrains are being introduced in a number of sectors; compensatory income aids modulated towards smaller and extensive producers will be payable to farmers both to offset the impact of price cuts and to compensate extensive production systems; an agri-environment aid scheme which will reward farmers who agree to farm in an environmentally friendly way is to be introduced; a pre-retirement scheme is to be put in place which stipulates that released land has to be farmed in harmony with the requirements of environmental protection; there is also to be an attractive scheme of aids for afforestation of agricultural land.

All of these measures should contribute in a very significant way towards achievement of the objectives outlined in the Green 2000 report. A less intensive and more stable agriculture industry in the Community will clearly impact on the levels of fertiliser and pesticide usage and the production of animal wastes. The agri-environment aid scheme offers considerable potential for promoting farming practices of an environmentally friendly type thus facilitating maintenance of bio-diversity and natural habitats.

Under the agri-environment measure, which I want to concentrate on today, each member state is required to introduce an agri-environment programme though any scheme under it will be voluntary for farmers. Compensation can be paid to farmers for loss of income and/or increased costs and for the part they played in improving the environment.

Subject to positive effects on the environment, aid can be paid to farmers to reduce substantially their use of fertilisers and plant protection products or introduce or continue with organic farming methods; change to or maintain extensive crop production or convert arable land to grassland; reduce sheep and cattle numbers per forage area; use any other farming methods beneficial to the environment or to rear endangered native breeds; upkeep abandoned farmland and woodland; set aside farmland for 20 years, especially for the establishment of biotope reserves or natural parks; manage land for public access and leisure activities. Aid can also be made available for training farmers in farming or forestry practices compatible with the environment.

Each member state must submit its draft framework of aid schemes to the Commission by 30 July 1993 for approval and I expect to have the draft scheme from Ireland submitted well ahead of that deadline.

My Department has had consultations with or received submissions from various organisations, including environmental interests, the farm organisations and State agencies, in connection with the preparation of our scheme to give effect to this important measure.

I am not yet in a position to give final details of my proposals for the agri-environment scheme but it is envisaged at this stage that there will be a general environmentally sensitive areas scheme available to farmers throughout the country. Farmers will be paid a basic premium per hectare for work carried out under this scheme such as maintaining hedgerows, repairing traditional stone walls, fencing water courses and protecting wildlife habitats, etc.

In addition it is envisaged that farmers who undertake further environmentally friendly farming activities such as organic farming, tackling overgrazing problems, tackling water quality problems and managing land designated as natural heritage areas by the Office of Public Works will receive additional aid.

I have initiated discussions between the relevant Government Departments in regard to producing from agriculture many of the bio-diesel products which could be a very valuable alternative farm enterprise. I would like to pay tribute to the work that has been undertaken by Teagasc and by Dr. Tom Thomas in our Oak Park research station.

It would be unfair to give the impression that my Department's interest in and concern for environmental protection is of recent origin. For a number of years now my Department, with EC assistance, has been operating a number of schemes with a strong environmental focus. In 1988 a scheme was introduced under the Programme for Western Development (PWD) in all the less-favoured areas whereby generous grant assistance was provided for the storage of animal and farmyard waste and fodder and for the housing of livestock which would otherwise have to be outwintered with consequent damage to land by poaching. Under the PWD some 2,800 farmers were paid £9 million in grant assistance. In 1989 the measure was extended to the country as a whole under the control of farmyard pollution scheme. To date some 25,000 farmers have been approved for works involving grant aid of £95 million under this scheme. The works have been completed in over 17,000 cases. I am happy to say that the processing of applications under this scheme has very recently recommenced following a review of commitments of the available funding for the measure. This should allow much valuable work to continue over the coming months.

Generous grant assistance for pollution control work has of course continued to be available since mid-1990 to farmers who follow a farm plan under the farm improvement programme; work under this programme has been completed in about 9,000 cases.

In physical terms, the works completed under the three grant schemes have provided storage facilities for almost three million cubic metres of farmyard waste, better housing for just under one million animals and storage for well over a million tonnes of fodder. The works carried out mark a significant step in protecting the environment from pollution by farmyard waste. Much more remains to be done in this whole area and considerable funding will continue to be needed under the next round of Structural Funds.

My Department is also active in the area of organic farming. In 1990 an Organic Farming Unit (OFU) was established to develop this sector. Since then a number of organic farming projects and activities have been assisted. Also officials of my Department are currently implementing a new EC regulation which sets out the legal arrangements for labelling and certifying organic produce.

As I have already mentioned, organic farming is one of the practices which may be aided under the agri-environment measures. Coupled with the growing demand for organic produce and given our already low usage of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, Irish products should be better able to enter and exploit this market.

No policy measures can succeed without good advice, education and training. Education aimed at encouraging increased awareness of environmental needs is an essential element in realising the aims set out in the Green 2000 report. The primary goal of such an educational programme should be to ensure that farmers comply with a code of good agricultural practices. Environmental protection, including control of farmyard wastes, is therefore, a significant feature of Teagasc's education, training and advisory programme. Greater emphasis will need to be placed on the role of education in the pursuit of environmental improvements in future years.

Research is another important factor in seeking to deal with environmental problems. Teagasc, at its Soils and Environmental Research Centre at Johnstown Castle, has an extensive research programme involving among many other things the development of environmentally friendly farming practices, including organic farming.

Before I conclude, I would like to speak about the Green 2000 report in the wider context of rural development and forestry which fall within my particular area of responsibility.

Against the background of Common Agricultural Policy reform and a new GATT agreement, we have in the past number of years been encouraging farmers and indeed other rural dwellers to look at alternatives to the main farming enterprises as a way of supplementing their incomes and thus providing an economic livelihood for themselves and their families. Significant among these alternative are forestry and agri-tourism.

Forestry has an impact on the environment and the landscape in particular, while agri-tourism relies heavily on the quality of our environment to attract visitors. We need to reconcile the needs of both these sectors in implementing an effective rural development policy. For example, we must look at ways of increasing the percentage of broadleaf trees which are planted. Also we must ensure that the planting of trees is done in such a way that it does not affect the amenity value of the landscape. We are all aware of the negative reaction there has been to the mass planting of conifers in certain parts of the country. A delicate balance has to be struck between increasing the area under forests, the rights of landowners and the needs of other sectors (such as tourism) where large-scale tree planting is proposed.

It is a condition of grant-aid under the forestry operational programme that forestry development is compatible with the protection of the environment. This provision is implemented through, for example, consultation with other State agencies, guidelines produced by the Forestry Service in relation to forestry development, the provision that in certain cases an environmental impact assessment be undertaken and planning permission be obtained, an emphasis on the planting of broadleaves, by means of a higher grant rate and a planned recreational forestry scheme.

I believe that the above provisions are having a positive effect, but the recommendations of the Green 2000 report will of course be considered in detail. I might point out at this stage, however, that the question of environmental impact assessment thresholds comes under the Local Government (Planning and Development) Acts, and are a matter for my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, and furthermore that I do not have statutory responsibility for the protection of woodlands for conservation, recreational or amenity purposes.

Agri-tourism such as farmhouse holidays, hill walking and pony trekking is the other main area which farmers and others living in rural areas have identified as playing a major role in providing extra employment and income opportunities. Generous grant assistance is available from State and EC sources for agri-tourism projects.

It goes without saying that various aid measures need to be implemented in an environmentally-friendly way. Indeed the Leader Programme explicitly provides that "particular attention will be paid to the need to avoid any investment which generates pollution and to the protection and development of rural landscapes".

In the post-1993 round of Structural Funds for agriculture and rural development, environmental considerations will not be lost sight of. One of our general objectives must be to capitalise on our green image as producers of high quality agricultural and food products through the achievement of high standards in terms of the environment, food quality and safety.

Green 2000 proposes that our minimum objective must be to arrest any further deterioration in our natural environment. Our target must be an unspoilt, unpolluted environment in which diversity of flora and fauna is sustained. This is desirable not only for aesthetic reasons but in the interest of Ireland's future economic success. This must be built on sustainable development in all sectors.

The report, borrowing from the Culliton report, states that our sustainable development must be based on quality of production, because those opportunities based on health and environmental factors that may become available to Irish agriculture in the '90s are probably the most significant, and natural resource-based economic activity such as tourism and agriculture, fisheries, food processing, high technology and service industries which require to varying degrees high conservation and environmental standards.

Looking to the year 2000 and beyond, agriculture in Ireland will most likely be dominated by the effects of Common Agricultural Policy reform and revised GATT arrangements. Against this background, agriculture and the food sector will be obliged to become more competitive, more quality conscious, more market-led and more innovative. We will have to make the most of all of our strengths if the agri-food sector is to develop and make the maximum contribution to Ireland's growth in economic and employment terms. Our environment is a major strength in the agri-food industry; we need to guard it and improve it. I believe that the Green 2000 report will help very much to focus our minds in this area and it is a most timely document.

In conclusion, I would like to record my appreciation of the work of the Green 2000 group and I will play my part in progressing the recommendations in the report.

I welcome the opportunity to debate this report. I see it as a preparatory report and, hopefully, a national statement of policy on the enhancement of the environment. In many ways it states the obvious from an environmentalist point of view and there is little new in the report. However, it is a good audit of the state of our public policy in relation to the environment.

I am sorry that no targets to be achieved by us as a Legislature are set out in the report. There is no mechanism for the evaluation of progress in the field of environmental protection. Many negative comments have been made about the report today but it must be taken in the context of the minor resources given to those who compiled this report. It is interesting to compare the dearth of resources given to those who compiled this report with the resources given to those who compiled the Culliton report. Such were the resources given to the Culliton committee that it was able to commission eight subsidiary reports. That priority should be given to a public policy matter such as the environment. It is not sufficient to appoint committed individuals to prepare a report on the state of the environment without making resources available to them to deal with those issues.

However, an environmental report such as this is useful because it will serve to reinvigorate a debate on the environment which, to some extent, has gone off the boil since the formation of this Government. Environmental issues can sometimes be put on the back burner when there are serious unemployment and economic issues to be tackled. It is similar to the issue of equality which tends to be less important when the economic climate is gloomy. That will probably be the case with the environmental issue also. It will be a waste of administrative work and intellectual investment if the Minister for the Environment does not act immediately to implement the recommendations of this report.

In common with many countries of the world Ireland has been particularly bankrupt on the environment. It was only with the emergence of the Green movement in Europe and our responsibilities as members of the European Community that Ireland began to respond to the fears voiced by non-governmental organisations and the voluntary sector. Much politicisation of ordinary members of the community has occurred through their interest in preserving the environment. It is a victory for democracy that the environment has managed to reach the top of the political agenda. This tends to occur at various times during the cut and thrust of everyday politics only to fall into insignificance when other problems arise. For example, the controversy concerning the interpretative centres was an environmental matter which received much political attention.

The increase of interest in the environment by Governments was slow. For many years it fell to small parties such as the Green Party and the Progressive Democrats to highlight environmental issues. I welcome the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in Johnstown Castle, County Wexford. It will be exciting to see how that agency operates and whether it can keep our focus firmly on the environmental agenda. I fear that we have lost sight of this and hopefully this debate will refocus our minds on the whole area of the environment.

Environmental policy should be pervasive. One of the recommendations of this report is that the Minister for the Environment should liaise with other Departments and ensure that all policies emanating from those Departments are tested for their impact on the environment. This is the only way the environment will become integrated into mainstream politics. That will take much drive and leadership on the part of the Minister for the Environment and I hope he will rise to the challenge. For example, the Minister for Enterprise and Employment should be as concerned about the environment as his colleague in the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications. Individual Ministers should have a reciprocal sense of responsibility with the Minister for the Environment to ensure that their policies are examined for their impact on the environment. The Minister for Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Taylor, has to motivate individual Departments to be mindful of equality in their various Departments.

I was interested to hear the Minister of State indicate that agri-environmental measures and programmes are being introduced in Europe. I am delighted to hear the organised ways in which farmers can be encouraged to be mindful of their environmental responsibilities. However, it is regrettable that such developments will be based on grants and that the only way farmers can be encouraged to be environmentally responsible is by paying them to be so. Unfortunately, that perpetuates the notion that people must be compensated for being good citizens and there appears to be a continuation of the dependency on grants from Europe to get anything moving.

It is regrettable from a Government point of view, the built environment is separated from the natural environment. There should be no division between the natural environment of air and water and the built environment, because the built environment has a major impact on the natural one. The distinction may have been caused by a lack of policy integration on environmental issues and by divorcing the environment from mainstream public policy. There is an unnatural division between the built and the natural environments in the Department.

The Minister for the Environment should devolve some of his environmental responsibilities to the local authorities. That would be a good way of moving forward. Local authorities are in the front line in developing environmental strategies. Last year I proposed that Dublin City Council should adopt its own environmental strategy for the following five years and take on responsibility for a range of policy initiatives, including open space management, conservation of our heritage buildings, cleaning of our canals and waste management within our city boundaries. Local authorities would be much more responsive than central Government to the individual needs of communities. The centralised way in which we deal with the environment at present is not the way forward. It is regrettable that the efforts to reform local government appear to have flagged and that local authorities are waiting to be given more power and resources to manage problems in their areas. Local authorities are the local face of the State and could effectively link in with the successful community development work taking place around the country at present. It is the planning authority decisions which affect the real environment of individual citizens.

Many areas could be devolved to local authorities — for example, energy efficiency, transportation, planning and public and environmental health. As there is overlap between environmental and health issues, we should be moving towards positively healthy programmes which could be spearheaded at local authority level.

The concept of sustainability, which is bandied around in environmental policy debates, is quite reasonable. By adopting that concept we should consume less, be selective in what we consume, produce less waste and recycle the waste we produce. We should not only protect the environment, but enhance the natural and built environments. Some local authorities are better at this than others, but some have a bigger workload. For example, in Dublin Corporation the environment is the poor relation; it is allocated minimal resources and initiatives are taken on board in a hesitant manner. The Dublin kerbside recycling project was adopted by Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council as a pilot scheme. It was adopted in a resentful way and on a trial basis to keep the environmentalists happy. There is no real enthusiasm at management level in Dublin Corporation for recycling. That is regrettable, because from an economic point of view it is not attractive and therefore a positive leadership approach is required at management level to give it the necessary spark. If the economics of the project are taken into account it will never get off the ground, because it does not make economic sense at present.

Members of the public are way ahead of the Government, local authorities and their elected representatives in regard to the environment. Many people have been politicised by their interest in the environment and some are very passionate in that regard. Public policy is lagging behind the will of the people on environmental issues. Many citizens are awaiting leadership and the implementation of measures which will reflect their concerns. That is particularly noticeable in any debate concerning rezoning which is the most politically alive subject. People come out in thousands to march the streets in protest if they believe a piece of land is being threatened by a rezoning application. The regressive rezoning that is taking place in the county at present is disappointing because the local authorities in Dublin had started to move forward, away from the flight to the periphery and the scandals highlighted in the sixties and the seventies.

Women throughout the world have been to the fore in the environmental movement and they are vital to the success of any waste management and recycling activity. The kerbside scheme, which is operational in my area, has had a 90 per cent success rate, due mainly to women and children being willing to participate in recycling schemes. There should be many more bottle banks around our city as there are not enough facilities to cater for the recycling of waste. Many people are embarrassed about the contents of their waste bins in the sense that 40 per cent of their waste comprises packaging. We will have to move towards a packaging tax to provide an incentive for manufacturers not to use so much packaging on their products. Non-governmental organisations have set the agenda in regard to the environment and are frustrated by the slowness and lethargy at Government level. In times of economic hardship this is understandable, but not justifiable. The creation of employment, prosperity and wealth must be top of the agenda; but that is no justification for putting the protection and enhancement of the environment on the back burner.

Economic growth must proceed in step with the overriding consideration that development must be sustainable in environmental terms, development which meets our present needs without compromising or damaging that which we hold on trust for our children. In environmental terms we are trustees of the State and we have a high duty of care. I wonder if our children will praise us for our prudence or hate us for the complacency which is obvious in regard to environmental matters. We need only reflect on the mistakes of the sixties in the planning of our city. There was no real planning or integration of transportation and planning policies.

This lack of integration led us into the present mess of a damage limitation exercise in Dublin city. Thankfully, there is now a real understanding among the officials and excellent planners we have in Dublin Corporation that this city must be brought back to being a living city and I believe the flight to the periphery has been halted. Nothing happens by chance; we must now take positive action in regard to the built as well as to the natural environment to redress and compensate for the mistakes of the past. I have been privileged to be a member of the local authority committee on the Dublin Transportation Initiative. This is the first holistic and long term planning approach which has been taken in regard to environment aspects of transportation and planning in the greater Dublin area.

Traffic and its management is a major environmental issue. It has become the main political issue in my constituency in Dublin South. This is because we are dealing with transport matters in a crisis management fashion because of planning mistakes in the past. I look forward to the final report of the Dublin Transportation Initiative and the goodwill of the Government in making their request for Structural Funds resources to implement the recommendations of the Dublin Transportation Initiative. The project is an exciting one. If we can solve the traffic problems in the greater Dublin area we will go a long way towards satisfying the real needs and demands of Dubliners. Traffic problems affect the environment and the quality of life in this city.

The quality of air in the city has improved dramatically thanks to the banning of bituminous coal and the widespread use of lead free petrol. There has been great success also in many other areas in the past few years. The blue flag scheme relating to the quality of bathing waters has improved people's awareness and provided us with cleaner water. However, there has been neglect and subsequent deterioration in some areas, such as river pollution, a decline in lake water quality, an increase in ground water contamination and a loss of natural habitats and open spaces.

The Green 2000 report states a minimum objective, to arrest any further deterioration of the natural environment. However, it is regrettable that there is nothing in the report which guarantees the achievement of that objective. Disharmony with nature should be a major concern in a country where many are only one generation removed from the land. There is a latent interest in the environment among our people. We should harness that interest and work with the general public in regard to environmental issues. Teachers are getting the message across to children and they are more aware of the importance of a clean environment than their parents. Therefore, all the greater will be their wrath if we pass on to them an environment which is irreversibly damaged. I look forward to the future.

As Minister with direct responsibility for the further development of the Irish tourism industry, I very much welcome this comprehensive and wide ranging report by the Green 2000 Advisory Group on the key issues facing our natural environment.

Among the major strengths which characterise Irish tourism and which is of growing significance in a world suffering the ravages of industrial pollution is our clean physical environment. Ireland has been recognised for some time now as having one of the cleanest physical environments in Europe which, with a low population density, offers an ideal setting for a wide range of recreational and leisure pursuits, many of which, such as fishing, are critically dependent on the maintenance of a pollution free environment.

The advisory group found that for most environmental indicators the quality of our environment is relatively high in comparison with that of our European partners. The group considers that with its unique cultural endowment and magnificent landscapes, Ireland is an environmental treasure in a European context.

This, of course, is the message which our tourism industry has been spreading in our overseas markets. It goes without saying that it is imperative that we maintain this unique quality which gives us a competitive advantage in our endeavour to achieve sustainable development, particularly in the tourism sector.

It is clear, however, from the report that we cannot afford to be complacent. A number of areas are highlighted where some deterioration is evident, such as the pollution of our river waters and the destruction of landscapes and archaeological features. The report notes that the future performance of many non-tourism sectors of the Irish economy, such as the meat and dairy sectors, will be influenced not only by the actual quality of the physical environment but equally importantly by the perceptions which international consumers of Irish produce have of the quality of that environment and those products. The report rightly argues that the environment needs to be viewed as a strategic resource and a core element in our strategy to address the challenges of unemployment.

In its consideration of tourism and the environment, chapter 13 of the report correctly identifies the significant role which tourism now plays in our economy. It is estimated that tourism accounts for almost 7 per cent of Ireland's gross national product. It also supports some 90,000 jobs and accounts for over £1 billion of foreign tourism revenue every year. We have arrived at this point as a result of a sustained period of tourism growth over the last five years. Since 1988, overseas visitors have increased at an average rate of 10 per cent per annum while overseas revenue has increased by about 14 per cent per annum. In addition, over 20,000 extra jobs have been created in tourism in the economy. These successes have vindicated the Government's overall approach to the industry, in that it has actively encouraged the development of a more attractive tourism product for our overseas visitors.

At the start of the last national development plan, the Government recognised that friendly people, a good environment and scenic beauty were no longer sufficient on their own to attract visitors. It was accordingly decided to develop a more attractive and more diversified tourism product, one which remained substantially based on developing Ireland's environmental and cultural attractions. Through the tourism operational programme, Community funding has directly stimulated more than £400 million of public and private investment in the tourism sector. These investments have focused particularly on developing new and improved recreational activities where Ireland has particular product strengths. Facilities which are benefiting from EC funds include angling, cruising, equestrian, golf and walking holidays.

Similarly, substantial investments are being undertaken by both the public and private sectors in enhancing Ireland's cultural heritage. The theme town programme, being undertaken by Bord Fáilte and Shannon Development under the tourism operational programme, is one which allows towns with excellent inherited features to develop these features and improve their general and built environment, while at the same time enhancing their potential for tourism development. This programme is indicative of the Government's whole strategy, which has been directed at making Ireland more interesting and attractive for the foreign visitor, while continuing to respect the unique natural and man-made heritage which we are fortunate to possess.

Substantial complementary investments are also being undertaken in other sectors in support of the overall tourism effort. For instance, the operational programme for sanitary services is expanding and upgrading the water supply network at designated tourism centres. It is also providing for sewage improvements in several branded fishery catchments, and it is offering new sewage pump-out facilities for cruisers on our inland waterways. Similarly, the operational programme for rural development is helping farming communities to diversify into the tourism industry in a small scale and environmentally friendly manner, thereby helping to generate new sources of revenue to maintain our rural communities.

Government recognition of the vital role that tourism will play in future economic growth is reinforced in the Programme for a Partnership Government, 1993-97. The relevant initiatives are: the setting up of a new Department of Tourism and Trade, thus bringing together under one umbrella our two main sources of foreign earnings; bringing together under the aegis of that Department the State agencies involved in tourism, Bord Fáilte and CERT, together with the tourism functions of Shannon Development, and the setting of ambitious targets for the industry over the next five years, which include increasing foreign earnings in real terms by 50 per cent and providing an additional 35,000 jobs.

The Government's forthcoming National Development Plan will set out the strategy for realising these objectives. Our overall approach will seek to attract to Ireland visitors who will continue to enjoy Ireland's rich environmental heritage. We will obviously want to do this in a manner which will not damage that heritage, while at the same time wishing to enhance the presentational possibilities of that heritage in order to make it more meaningful to our foreign visitors.

The Green 2000 report rightly acknowledges that a balance between development and conservation has to be struck and that that overall balance will be crucial to the long term viability of the Irish tourism industry. The Government is determined that our existing environmental resources will be managed in a way that will yield the greatest sustainable benefit to present generations while maintaining the potential to meet the needs and aspirations of future generations.

The planning function of local authorities will continue to play a key role in ensuring that future tourism and other related developments are compatible with the environment. In this connection, Deputies will know that the Government has recently indicated its wish to reduce the number of exempted developments currently available under the Planning Acts.

The second level which will require continuing attention is the operation of tourism facilities. Clearly, excess demand can result in damage to the environment covered by the facility. Some evidence of such damage is apparent in other countries where the numbers using, for example, walking routes, have tended to damage the local environment. In general terms, I think it is fair to say that we in Ireland are a long way from reaching capacity limits in most tourism facilities. I am happy to note that the Green 2000 report tends to confirm this view.

In the recreational area, the report acknowledges that these activities compare very favourably with those of other sectoral areas, such as agriculture-fisheries and sewage disposal, in terms of their adverse impact on the natural environment in recent years. Obviously, we need to continue to ensure at operational level that the increasing number of visitors to Ireland in the future does cause damage to our environment. The report apparently sees no major difficulties in this area, noting that the impact of recreational activities on the environment can in general terms be minimised through good planning and management strategies.

In the heritage area, I was also heartened by the statement in the Green 2000 report that on-site interpretative centres, interpretation panels and leaflets at national parks, national reserves and similar tourist facilities are very important management tools. Such centres not only provide an important educational function for our visitors but they also serve, when properly planned and managed, to control the adverse effects of visitors on the surrounding environment.

It is important to recognise that the highest level of protection afforded to the natural environment is through State ownership and designation as a nature reserve or national park. In these areas, properties are actively managed to conserve the environment. In between the total protection provided by State ownership and the general protection given by the Planning Acts, there is a need for a conservation mechanism which will give a greater level of protection to special areas which still remain in private ownership. There can be no doubt that farmers are the principal conservationists, although they are not always given full credit for their role.

The old system of areas of scientific interest, ASIs, attempted to fill this gap, but many Deputies will already be aware of the questions and misconceptions which sometimes surrounded that system and a number of the recommendations in chapter 2 of the report reflect this. The Government has decided to designate those special areas which need to be conserved as natural heritage areas. It is very significant that the very name of these areas has been changed. We all now realise that these special parts of our land are not simply of interest to scientists and professionals but are an integral part of our heritage.

It is likely that most of the existing ASIs will qualify as natural heritage areas and will include raised bogs, blanket bogs, sand dune systems, wetlands, estuaries, important bird sites, woodlands and other areas of nature conservation interest. I understand that the EC will pay 50 per cent of the cost of a survey as the first step in identifying sites for designation under the Habitats Directive. The EC will also assist in the purchase of a small number of the very best sites which will be included in the Community-wide NATURA 2000 network of special areas for conservation.

I am delighted to say that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry has agreed that a new grant scheme will be introduced whereby owners of land will be eligible for farming grants, provided they manage the land in an environmentally friendly way. The details of this scheme, which will apply, inter alia, to natural heritage areas, will be announced later in the year. This is in line with the recommendation that maximum use be made of the environmental provisions of the Common Agricultural Policy reform.

With regard to land acquisition for nature conservation, I am aware that the Office of Public Works has concentrated in recent years on acquiring peatlands. This is because, as a fast disappearing and seriously threatened natural habitat, the Community has prioritised this area by introducing special EC financial instruments such as ACE, ACNAT and LIFE which were designated to assist nature conservation. The Government has provided the matching funds to the Office of Public Works to take maximum advantage of these funding mechanisms.

There are other endangered natural habitats in Ireland, for example, sand dune systems, turloughs, old oak woods, fens, old grasslands, etc., not to mention the habitats of threatened flora and fauna. We cannot acquire all those threatened sites in order to protect them, but as already mentioned, with the co-operation of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, payments will be made available to farmers in those areas if they farm their land in an environmentally sensitive way.

Prior to the recent reform of the Common Agricultural Policy there was substantial economic pressure on landowners to drain wetlands. This scene has now changed radically; reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and moves towards extensification and setaside have reduced the pressures on wetlands. With the possibility of environmentally sensitive area grants for environmentally friendly farming, affected landowners will be encouraged towards retention or even restoration of wetlands. Unique environmental areas, such as these, will form an integral part of the Government's plans for conservation and tourism development in the next National Development Plan.

I have mentioned already that the Government has targeted the tourism sector for particular attention over the next five years. Aside from encouraging direct investment in the industry, the Government will be anxious to ensure that complementary areas of State activity in areas such as roads and sanitary services also receive significant funding priority in the next round of EC Structural Funds. All of this investment in environmental enhancement will help to maintain our competitive position as a region of unique interest in Europe. The report contains many recommendations, such as those for reducing water pollution and the management of access to sensitive areas, which impact directly on the tourism sector. I hope that it will prove possible for these to be implemented by the relevant agencies and Departments as a priority. The overall aim of Government policy in the future will be to protect and improve the environment side by side with economic and social progress so that there will be a better quality of life for everybody, now and in the future.

In an exporting context it is now commonly accepted that a country with an environmentally friendly image has a competitive advantage in particular product areas, most notably in sophisticated markets in Europe. There, research has shown that the role of the environment in consumer buying decisions is significant and becoming more significant. For example, in Germany only quality and price are rated more highly; in the UK it is rated ahead of UK origin as a factor.

Research in those two markets has already shown that Ireland can be a major beneficiary of this change in consumer priorities. In the key German market, Ireland's largest in Continental Europe, Ireland rates second after Germany itself as the "greenest" country in Europe in buyers' eyes. In our largest market, the UK, we are in fourth position. Given that our products are also perceived as being somewhat expensive, it is important that we have this "green" selling point as a counter-balance.

Clearly, food and tourism are the product sectors where all these considerations are of most crucial importance. Positioning Irish food as high-quality, upmarket and produced in a pollution-free environment can be our main source of competitive advantage. However, to "cash-in" on this we need, firstly, to ensure that Irish products are identifiably Irish and, secondly, to protect our position by giving substance to our "green" image through rigorous application of appropriate environmental standards.

The Government is examining these and other critical issues in the light of the report of the Expert Group on the Food Industry which was published last week. The House can be assured that the decisions we make will be those which do most to safeguard and develop our export markets.

Finally, I would like to say that the Green 2000 Advisory Committee has done a fine job in presenting well thought-out recommendations to the Taoiseach. I would like to thank them all for the time and effort which they put into their extensive deliberations on this important topic for economic and social development in Ireland in the future.

I welcome the publication of and debate on this report, notwithstanding the aspirational nature of some of its recommendations. I think it was Deputy Upton who referred to the large-scale aspirational value of some aspects of the report. Nonetheless, it behoves us to study and absorb its contents, ascertaining how its recommendations can be applied in everyday usage. That applies more particularly to Government Departments and agencies.

Let me now examine what has been done since some five to seven years ago when environmental issues were emphasised, at least on one side of the House, and various reports published were greeted with much approval. I do not recall anything substantive having emerged from the backwash of that period in which there was a great deal of concentration on environmental issues by at least one of the present Government parties. I do not wish to be political about it, but it would be advisable for us to ask ourselves now the salient question: just exactly what happened as a result of the publication of those earlier reports and debates thereon? Although the Environmental Protection Agency is up and running, it should be remembered that that transpired from a combination of factors totally unrelated to the corralling of the environmental issues on the part of a particular Government party or through the publication of reports.

Notwithstanding all of that, there is a huge responsibility on developed countries to put in place a set of procedures which would at least protect the environment remaining to us rather than, as in the past, having no regard to protection of the environment on the basis that similar damage was being done elsewhere. That does not excuse us for our actions or lack thereof. One need only think of a recent series of television programmes showing what has happened in rain forests leading to their total destruction. Unfortunately, one must balance such destruction with the unfortunate plight of people who must endeavour to eke out an existence in that same environment. I remember a colleague of my own party many years ago setting out the parameters within which he contended our environment could be protected. He believed then — and I believe he is still right — that one cannot expect the less developed regions to protect the environment without help or assistance. Assistance in this case means financial assistance, through funding or other alternatives from the developed world. I shall not dwell on that overly, but it is no harm to reflect on it at present.

Some years ago I think it was the United Nations which produced a report outlining the benefits of tree planting, particularly in the case of countries disposed to fast economic growth and so on. Despite the fact that I tabled questions to the Taoiseach and Minister of the day, and indeed subsequent Ministers, I do not recall anything constructive having flowed from that conclusion other than the fact that it occupied a certain amount of air and newsprint space for a couple of weeks. But nothing positive flowed from it that would have a lasting beneficial impact on our environment. Essentially, what we were then being told was that everybody had a responsibility to protect the environment; that it should be possible worldwide, but especially in this hemisphere, to identify areas where tree planting could take place which would be of tremendous benefit without impoverishing any other individual, group or agency. I believe there is sufficient land at present available here for such purposes. Certainly, bearing in mind the setaside lands about which we heard so much recently, there should be even greater available space here for tree planting which would be of benefit environmentally.

I might deal briefly with the continuing argument about the planting of conifers as against native species of trees. Unfortunately, somewhere at administrative level it appears a lever is pulled to an immediate change of opinion. For example, anybody seeking planning permission at present, certainly in rural areas, will be discouraged from planting conifers but encouraged to resort to native species. Nearly always the purpose of planting trees near a dwelling apart from environmental and aesthetic considerations, is to provide shelter. I cannot understand why nobody appears to have realised that it is essential there be mixed planting, that we should not merely change from planting conifers to planting native species, thus leading to enormous quantities of leaves falling in autumn, which in turn causes other serious problems. Probably those were problems not thought of by some of the experts who produced the original report on conifers. We should recognise also that 3,000 years ago Caledonian pines were native to this country. Therefore, when Government Departments are issuing instructions they should not pull all of the levers simultaneously but rather ensure a reasonable balance. That applies to the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry and to local authorities.

With regard to local authorities, I might dwell for a moment on one specific area referred to in this House repeatedly. No Government Department has a greater direct responsibility for the elimination of pollution and protection of our environment, whether in the air or on the ground, than the Department of the Environment.

Pollution in our lakes, rivers and canals can be traced to the lack of adequate sewage treatment plants. Despite the fact that much publicised EC funds have been available for the past 15 years or so we have failed to grasp the nettle. The need to protect our environment should have been high on our list of priorities and we could have done so by using those funds. If one reads the minutes of local authority meetings throughout the country time and again one will come across references to the need to protect our environment through the elimination of pollution due to the inadequacy or lack of sewage treatment facilities.

We should ask ourselves what is the reason this matter should be tackled as a matter of urgency. The answer is because there are more people living in our cities, towns and villages now than there were 50 years ago and the demand for such services is greater. Unfortunately, these services have not been brought up to standard to meet demand. I fail to understand the reason no Government said that it was going to provide the necessary finance during a specific period which would have enabled the Government to announce to all and sundry that pollution due to the inadequacy of sewage treatment facilities had been eliminated. This is a major issue in town and country and I ask the Government to address it as a matter of urgency. Otherwise, this report, Green 2000, and every other report will be worthless.

I would now like to deal with the question of the treatment of sewage before it is disposed in the seas around us, in particular the Irish Sea. Since the environment became the focus of attention a number of years ago much has been written and said about the threat posed by Sellafield in relation to pollution of the seas. How successful have we been to date? While we have set ourselves clear objectives and recognise that there is a need to do something, we have failed to come to grips with the matter or to achieve anything worthwhile apart from shouting about it. The time has come for us to ask ourselves whether we should debate and welcome reports such as this if we cannot point to any successes achieved on foot of previous reports.

I would now like to deal with another local issue, that is, the question of waste disposal. I mention this for a particular reason. The good people of Dublin proposed to dump their waste at Kill in my constituency. Ten to 15 years ago when landfill sites were the norm and were acceptable this would have been all right, but times have changed and I hope, in relation to this application, that the political representatives of the people of Dublin will take a second look at this proposal and decide instead that it would be better if this site was retained as an amenity rather than used as a dump for domestic waste.

In regard to the question of control over the way waste is disposed, it is very difficult to control the material dumped in landfill sites at present or indeed the volume. All that one can do is appeal to the people concerned to have regard for the environment. Unfortunately, people in this country adopt a cavalier approach to those in authority and seem to approach the matter on the basis that if they dump this waste at night no one will notice and no damage will be caused. It is time that those people changed their attitude and it is up to us to make them aware of their responsibilities. As Members of this House and of local authorities, we should try to convince those who make the important and relevant decisions that they should ensure that the environment is protected.

I would now like to turn my attention to the agricultural sector. Like other Members of this House, I came from such a background originally and I am aware of the developments that have taken place during the past 20 to 30 years. I recall that I pointed out, at least 25 years ago, to the then experts that the continued use of certain nitrogenous fertilisers and over-production in certain areas could not be sustained over a long period. I was able to make this deduction without the help of any experts. Many others, including, I am sure the Minister of State, also held that view. However, there was a considerable body of expert opinion which held the contrary view and they won the day. We are now confronted with the resultant problems. I can well understand the reason some people opt for organic farming which can be difficult to perfect. In this regard I recall that in the fities when a reasonable amount of fertiliser was used it was possible to achieve a certain level of productivity without causing any damage to the environment. However, from the early to mid-seventies onwards there was increased use of fertilisers and pesticides with the result that creatures such as the unfortunate landrail or corncrake have disappeared. This is a legacy we have no wish to hand on to the next generation.

There are many other points I could make in this debate on the environment which affects everyone. In some parts of the world the environment is not in good condition but in this part of the world it was handed on by previous generations in a good condition. I hope that by focusing attention on the environment in debates such as this that, with the co-operation of local authorities and other agencies throughout the country, we will be in a position to hand it on to the next generation in at least as good a condition as we found it.

Wexford): I welcome the Green 2000 Advisory Group's report as a significant contribution to the development of Irish environment policy. The report's analysis and recommendations, on which I compliment the group, will be valuable to Government Departments, development agencies and to everyone concerned about our environment.

Environmental quality impinges on all aspects of life and economic activity. That is why the Programme for a Partnership Govenrment makes a renewed commitment to the protection and enhancement of the environment. The programme also undertakes that all major sectoral policies will be required to adhere to the principle of sustainable development. The achievement of sustainable development is, of course, the main objective of last year's United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. In line with this, the Programme for a Partnership Government promises that environmental considerations will be integrated into the key areas identified in the EC Fifth Environmental Action Programme — industry, transport, energy, tourism and agriculture.

The Green 2000 report endorses this principle of integration and states in the general recommendations that—

Environmental protection considerations must be fully integrated in all policy areas and at all levels of implementation by Government.

I would not pretend that there are any easy solutions, in terms of structures or otherwise, to the requirement of environmental integration. I am, however, convinced that the road to success lies in internalising consideration of the environment in all relevant sectoral policies. The fact that so many Ministers have spoken in this debate today demonstrates the seriousness of the Government's concern to achieve this environmental integration.

The Department of the Environment has the lead role for general policy on environmental protection. The framework of a national environment action programme will be maintained and this will continue to provide a general co-ordination of environmental policies and measures. The second review of the current environmental action programme will be published shortly and will chart progress in implementation to date.

In the time available I would like to concentrate on some of the general recommendations of the report. I support in particular the following recommendation:

There needs to be an increase in the understanding and acceptance at all levels that the maintenance of Ireland's high quality environment is a key ingredient in allowing the economy to develop and generate high quality jobs now and in the future.

There has been a marked change in recent years in public attitudes to the environment generally. There is a greater awareness of "green issues" and an increasing market demand for environmentally friendly products. However, in order to ensure the future well being of our total environment, natural and manmade, it is necessary to educate and enlist the support of our young people. It is they, and future generations, who will one day inherit the overall responsibility of caring for our environment.

Environmental education must be an integral part of all stages of formal education. I personally believe that an environmental theme should run through all spheres of education, particularly at primary and secondary level. Formal environmental education at school level is an important element in increasing environmental awareness, which will thereby lead to an environmentally conscious society. My Department's show case, ENFO, and its environmental bulletin could play a significant role in facilitating the transfer of environmental education.

It is not mentioned anywhere in Green 2000.

(Wexford): I accept that. An interdepartmental committee to promote environmental awareness in schools was established by the Government in 1988 and I understand that its report is about to be formally submitted to the Minister for Education. My Department was represented on that committee and I would hope that the White Paper on Education to be published later this year will have regard to its recommendations. I am surprised it has taken from 1988 to 1993 for this interdepartmental committee to make its findings known. I hope there will be no further undue delay.

A couple of interdepartmental committees have been meeting for a long time.

(Wexford): I will be meeting with the Minister shortly and I will request that environmental education is given due prominence in the formal education of our young people.

It has been shown, and a survey commissioned by the Department of the Environment in 1991 also bore this out, that young people are often the educators of their parents when it comes to matters of environmental awareness. This fact adds to the importance of including environmental education in the formal school curriculum. The report calls for existing public awareness campaigns to be strengthened. The Department's environmental information service, ENFO, continues to play an increasing role in raising public awareness of the need to protect the environment. ENFO acts as a one-stop shop, providing facilities for general information as well as research facilities for in depth studies. It has established on-line links with 33 libraries throughout the country, which enables members of the public to have direct access to the ENFO database. As a measure of its success ENFO now receives each week on average 1,000 visitors and handles 300 post and telephone inquiries.

The Department funds also an environmental awareness awards scheme for non-governmental organisations. The objective of the scheme is to stimulate individual responsibility and action to protect the environment.

We have now a relatively comprehensive modern legislative framework underpinning environmental protection. The sole exception relates to waste management. The Government is committed to introducing this year a Bill on waste management. I endorse that committed to introducing this year a Bill on waste management. I endorse that commitment. This morning Deputy Doyle raised this issue. We all share her concern that it be introduced as quickly as possible, certainly by the end of the year.

What is the delay?

(Wexford): The Bill heads have gone to the different Departments for their consideration.

And for them to take out the sections that affect them?

(Wexford): No.

The programme managers will have a look at it first.

As we know.

(Wexford): The future of recycling in this country will be seriously addressed over the coming months. A national recycling strategy was promised in the Programme for Government. I have just published a study entitled Towards a Recycling Strategy for Ireland which was commissioned by the Department. As a first step I invited industry, recycling operators, local authorities and consumers to let me have their views on the issues raised in this study by the end of May. I then intend to design an effective national recycling strategy in consultation with the interested parties.

Deputies have referred to recently reported problems in the Dublin and Cork areas regarding disposal of hospital wastes. Hospital wastes are a complex waste stream; in common with other special wastes, they need an environmentally sound management system. The present widely fragmented approach to hospital waste management in Ireland is not satisfactory. Strict new emission standards for all hazardous waste incineration are now being negotiated at EC level; and these are likely to apply, at least to some extent, to clinical wastes. Given this position, the Department of the Environment and the Department of Health are in contact about rationalising the approach to hospital waste management.

Hospital waste incineration is due to come under the control of the new Environmental Protection Agency. However, incineration may no longer be the sole possibility for disposing of clinical wastes. Consideration is also being given to improving management and segregation systems and to use of alternative technologies such as steam sterilisation and grinding combined with chemical sterilisation.

The Government is committed to improving the arrangements for the disposal of hazardous waste. The proposal for a national incinerator has been put on the agenda by the Minister for the Environment, Deputy Smith. It is intended that consultation and discussion will take place over the summer months with various interested parties to bring the debate out into the open and allow the public to contribute to solving this problem.

There are of course obvious economic and environmental advantages in the minimisation of waste at source and the environment action programme indicated the Government's determination to promote, primarily through the industrial development agencies, the adoption of clean technologies and low waste production processes by industry.

Will there be grants to help industry promote clean technology?

(Wexford): Possibly. The Department has commissioned a study on the means to promote the greater uptake of clean technologies by industry and we hope to have this before long.

Legislation alone will not ensure environmental quality. It must be complemented where appropriate by economic instruments, voluntary schemes, research and development programmes and, as I mentioned earlier, information campaigns, education and training.

Governments cannot protect the environment on their own. Care of the environment is a shared responsibility. All sections of society — public authorities, industry, business, farmers, voluntary organisations and ordinary members of the public — have a duty to contribute to environmental protection. Shared responsibility for the environment will be encouraged by making more and better information on the environment available to the public. We have already requested local authorities to implement the EC Directive on freedom of access to information on the environment. My Department, in consultation with the National Standards Authority of Ireland, are currently devising voluntary schemes on ECO labelling and ECO auditing to be implemented by individual companies.

The Green 2000 report states:

Economic instruments in which tax and grant provisions are designed to protect and enhance the natural environment should be an integral component of environmental and fiscal policies.

There is a consensus that we must now think in terms of the environment having a cost just as other resources have and that pricing should reflect this cost. In order to promote more systematic study of the economic aspects of environment policy in the Irish context, the Department of the Environment has recently concluded an agreement with the Economic and Social Research Institute to set up an Environment Policy Research Centre.

The report addresses the importance of EC funding for the environment. One of its general recommendations states as follows:

The underlying theme for the next round of Structural/Cohesion and other EC funds should be to maximise our potential in having the highest quality environment within the European Community. This approach to EC funds should form the basis of a "Green Development Programme 1994-1997".

Already, in the present round of Structural Funds, much emphasis has been placed on environmental quality and protection. In the case of the Department of the Environment, the Community Support Framework for Ireland, 1989-1993, gave specific recognition to the role of extended and improved sanitary and other local services in underpinning sustainable development. An operational programme for water and sanitary services is being implemented to support agriculture, rural development, tourism and other activities which depend on the presence of high environmental quality. It is intended to maintain the development strategy of this programme over the next six years, for the duration of the next tranche of Structural and Cohesion Funds.

The Minister's speech deserves an audience of more than one if the environment is to be taken seriously by Deputies. I know the Minister will agree the level of representation in the House at present is a disgrace. I am calling a quorum.

At 3.52 p.m. notice taken that 20 Members were not present; the quorum bells were rung.

At 4 p.m., pursuant to the Order of 29 April 1993, the Dáil stood adjourned until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 4 May 1993.

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