[FONT="]FRIENDS, it is a joy to see so many of you here tonight in the historic town of Wexford. Yet again I look forward to meeting with you and hearing what you have to say about the serious challenges which lie immediately ahead of us.
I am more than ever grateful for your support in these fraught and difficult times and mindful of the trust you have placed in me and my colleagues at Leinster House. Now more than ever we need to hear your ideas and borrow from your stock of bravery and innovativeness for the tough road ahead.
I am confident that over the next 36 hours I will hear many things which will be of help to the Green Party in Government and which will thus be of benefit to the people of Ireland as a whole.
I want you to know that we have listened very carefully to what you have said to us sometimes in no uncertain terms. Not only have listened at the various membership meetings – we have responded positively. And where we get things wrong, and sometimes we do, you have let us know. We are a self-questioning and a deeply self-critical party. We are all the stronger because of that.
One of the issues that has caused deep concern and upset in our party has been the changes to the Equality Authority. Those changes resulted in the resignation of Niall Crowley, a man of integrity and principle, and that was very regrettable.
At our membership meetings I undertook to have those changes reversed. And I’m very glad to report to you this evening
that we have succeeded in our mission. The planned further decentralisation of staff has been stopped and a further review of funding for the Equality Authority to ensure that it can do its work effectively.
I want to thank the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice for their cooperation in this matter. It shows that we can work out those difficulties in Government.
When we joined this Government we were wanted but not needed. Now we are needed and it’s nice to be needed. It means that many things which were previously unattainable now become possible. There are so many areas where we will exceed the expectations of the Programme for Government. I know this will make the task of the forthcoming local elections that bit easier.
FRIENDS, as a party leader facing an election campaign, it is always encouraging to see our candidates for next June’s local council and European Parliament elections here among you.
As always it will be a hard campaign. I am pleased to see/happy to know we will be joined by Steven Agnew – our European Parliament standard bearer in Northern Ireland – and shortly he will be joined by our MLA Bryan Wilson and their many colleagues who have made the long trek to Wexford to join us. I again wish Senator Deirdre de Burca every success in her campaign in the Dublin constituency and I wish that same to Dan Boyle as he contests in the South.
Above all, I welcome our 82 local council candidates – some brave first-timers, others campaign-hardened veterans. I know all of us here and our friends, families and supporters will give you every support possible. I am confident we will have a good campaign and a successful outcome on June 5 next.
FRIENDS and fellow delegates. There is no other way to say this. It has been a very difficult and worrying week for everyone in this country.
In the past month we have lost an average of almost one thousand jobs per day. Too many families are facing a grim life without a weekly wage and people with hard-won businesses are fretting they may lose their livelihood.
The position of the Irish economy is grim indeed right now. I won’t dwell overlong on the details. You know them already too well yourselves.
In the coming weeks the Government must make some of the most difficult choices ever made in this country on reducing spending and increasing revenues. These decisions are absolutely necessary so this country can have a viable and sustainable financial future. We are talking about not just about the prosperity but also the independence of our people now and into the future.
However, as we do that vital work, it is even more imperative that we also begin work on re-building our economy. We will work to sustain jobs and create opportunities for new jobs.
That is why I want here this evening, and over the next two days at this annual Green Party members’ gathering, to talk about a Green New Deal for Ireland. It is something which is already creating jobs and has the potential to create many more jobs.
I want to focus on how this will bring Irish jobs, wage packets and prosperity. The Green New Deal, also encompassing badly-needed reforms in the way we order our affairs, can help all of us create a sustainable and long-term future for the Irish people.
Many people – outside of this party – do not understand how long the Green Party has been on the go. And they do not understand how far the agenda we have championed from the outset and over 27 years has come from the fringe to the centre of every aspect of life. Only some people understand how the Irish Greens are linked to a worldwide movement – a movement championing an idea whose time has come.
From Washington to Beijing, governments are now embracing investment in green projects, they are creating green jobs and in sum taking on board a totally green way of doings things.
Big money is going into renewable energy projects such as wind and wave generation. There is huge investment in things like cleaning up and preventing pollution as well as recycling. More and more entrepreneurs are realising that best returns come from industry which operates in harmony with the natural environment.
United Nations data tells us that the global market for environmental goods and services will double over the next decade to 2.7 trillion dollars a year. Ireland must get a significant slice of that action.
This Green revolution offers an enormous opportunity for the Irish economy to capitalise on what we do best, developing world class goods and services.
In addition, Government investment in a low carbon economy and our environment will also create thousands of jobs here.
The Green Party in 20 months of Government has already taken the first steps towards a Green New Deal. This year more than 10,000 jobs will be created and sustained through Green Party Government initiatives. This includes 4,500 jobs in the Government’s €100 million insulation scheme, and a further 4,700 jobs in building our water infrastructure. There will be up to 2,000 more in renewable energy and energy efficiency schemes under Eamon Ryan’s department.
By 2020, the measures being taken will result in Ireland generating 40 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, which will be among the highest in the world.
We will have a low carbon economy, which means we can also be one of the most competitive economies in the world.
In the coming weeks the Government will also be announcing the establishment of an action group on green enterprise, which will include some of the best green business entrepreneurs Ireland has produced.
They will draw up a plan for how we can grow our green enterprise sector into a world class export business, creating thousands of highly skilled green collar jobs.
From information technology to financing and green energy, the Green tech and clean tech sector is the economy of the future.
We will also push for the development of our agricultural sector. Trevor Sargent is now implementing a plan to increase our organic sector exponentially to five per cent of our agricultural land.
This will enable us to capture a significant portion of the €2.1billion euro organic market in the UK, and the €4.1 billion market in Germany, generating a sustainable future for 5,000 of our farmers.
But we will also reform how we do things in Ireland, to banish light- touch financial regulation and the reckless profit-driven bank system it fostered, feeding in turn into developer-led planning and building system that helped create it.
We will reform our planning laws to put the interests of people - not the developers - first. We will make sure that new towns and estates cannot be built without adequate transport and infrastructure. This is a theme I intend to return to tomorrow evening.
MEANWHILE, friends, as I have said, the next two days will be more about listening than talking. I thank you again for the support you have shown me and my government colleagues Eamon Ryan and Trevor Sargent. I am as always grateful to my other parliamentary colleagues Senators Deirdre de Burca and Dan Boyle as well as Ciaran Cuffe, Mary White and Paul Gogarty.
By now friends, I think I have taken enough of your time. Amid the talk and serious debate, a Green Party gathering could not take place without much fun and even the odd song.
I will leave the floor to others.
Go raibh maith agaibh. Biodh deireadh seachtain iontach agaibh! [/FONT]
Originally Posted by jayblue
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