Ireland's NAP decisions strongly criticised

Resumen de Prensa            Enervía, martes, 10 febrero 2004

FUENTE: Point Carbon


Ireland's Minister of Environmeny, Martin Cullen, is being strongly criticised by the opposition after announcing the framework of Ireland's national allocation plan (NAP) under the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) last Thursday.

The Irish companies participating in the EU ETS will be allocated a total of 22.5 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) in the period 2005 to 2007, and only insignificantly less in the five year period thereafter.
"By allowing major industries and energy producers to 'trade' out of their environmental obligations, there is a real danger that the burden of meeting our Kyoto commitments will now fall on households, car owners and farmers. In making his announcement Minister Cullen has given no indication as to how it is intended to pay for this initiative but I do not believe that major industrial concerns, many of whom make multi-million Euro profits every year should be allowed to benefit, if this means that a pensioner will end up paying more for a bag of fuel," Eamon Gilmore, Labour Party spokesperson on the environment, said, reported politics.ie.

"I am also concerned that as he has given 97% of our allowances to existing industrial concerns, this will be an impediment to the attraction of new industrial concerns to this country," Gilmore said.

Politics.ie also quoted a Green Party spokesperson saying:
"Membership of the new EU emissions trading system will exempt the large industrial companies from having to pay any new carbon tax. However the real inequity in this new arrangement is that Ireland's heavy industry sector received their quota for the trading system absolutely free. The only flexibility the government had to encourage these companies to reduce their emissions was to allocate them a quota below their current emissions level."