GREEN PARTY:IRELAND CAN be free from its dependency on oil by 2030, the Green Party claimed yesterday.
Former minister for energy Eamon Ryan said the Greens had “the new ideas that are going to cut back our €6 billion fossil fuel bill and create jobs here”.
The other political parties recognised that “the green economy is where the jobs come from, but we need the Greens in the Dáil to show them how to get there,” he said. Mr Ryan claimed that those parties had “taken some of the ideas we’ve developed over the last five or 10 years, but they’re not looking forward to the next 10 years.”
Mr Ryan said the Fine Gael five-point plan was about a green economy, “but if you look at the actual detail of it, I don’t think they know how to develop it”.
Mr Ryan said his party had an “interim target of 40 per cent renewables and a transport target of having 10 per cent of vehicles running on electricity within 10 years. The current rate is zero”.
He said there had been progress while the Greens were in office. “The amount of renewable electricity doubled in our time.” Home insulation was one of the “easiest, most economic ways of cutting out oil.”
Responding to questions on the party’s performance in opinion polls, Green leader John Gormley said it would be “very regrettable to throw the Green baby out with the Fianna Fáil bathwater”.
