The upside to green living

Here's a piece from the Irish Times that I wrote in response to an article from Seán Byrne’s entitled “Green living may mean cold comfort for many”...

...Anyone who has spent time in a traffic jam might quibble with his suggestion that fewer car journeys imply a reduced quality of life. Similarly his view that a green lifestyle requires a loss of recreational showers is hardly that onerous. Showering with a friend is a time-honoured way of saving water, but installing a low-flow shower heads may suit those of a more puritanical leaning.


On a more serious note, a radical shift to reducing carbon emissions is crucial if we are to reduce the negative impact that our Western lifestyles are already imposing on developing countries. Climate change is already happening and it is the vulnerable in the developing world that are paying the price for our excessive consumption. There are many advantages to more careful consumption and travelling closer to home. A simple lesson from the Celtic Tiger years is that quality is worth more than quantity. Holidaying in Ireland can boost Ireland’s employment, and if you are travelling abroad, ‘slow travel’ by train and ferry can allow you to leave Dublin Port in the morning and arrive in Northern France by early evening without the stress of air travel. I highly recommend it. Communities that plan for walking and cycling generally have a higher quality of life than those built around the voracious needs of the private car. As an architect and town planner I know that we can design buildings and communities that require only a fraction of the energy that what was built over recent decades. There’s also significant scope for increased employment in retrofitting and upgrading existing buildings, and providing sustainable alternatives to increased car ownership and use.


Byrne suggests that driving may be more energy efficient than walking, but anyone concerned at rising hospital admissions due to obesity cannot ignore the importance of regular exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle. His extract from Timoney’s study is more appropriate to a school debate than a paper of record. His suggestion that wind energy requires ‘vast tracts of land’ ignores the fact that most of the land around wind-turbines apart from the turbine bases and access roads can be used for other uses such as grazing or food crops. Of course Government has to carefully approach the use of subsidies in the path towards a low-carbon economy. High subsidies for energy produced from photovoltaics may have distorted the energy market in Germany and Spain in recent years, but it did encourage investment in renewables in these countries. Proper life-cycle analysis is required of sustainable technologies, but the evidence shows that Government subsidies can speed up the adoption of experimental technologies into the mainstream. In the Irish context, the pay-back for solar water heating in new homes can be less than a decade. An easy-to-use calculator is available on the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s website.

Generally the private sector is better at choosing winners, but carrots are required as well as sticks, and pump-priming new areas of economic activity by the State can be worthwhile. The success of sustainable construction in recent years has resulted from a combination of European Directives; Irish Government regulation and grant-aid; and entrepreneurs prepared to put their money forward. I am proud of the role that the Green Party played during its time in Government to further environmental initiatives, despite the economic challenges that we also faced.


A greener lifestyle may involve less variety in food, but as I write I look out to a small urban garden where I grow vegetables such as artichokes and broad beans, and fruits including apples, plums and pears. Of course I eat imported food, but it’s worth bearing in mind fair trade, food miles, and carbon use when you purchase.


Tackling climate change is a deadly serious issue. Weather extremes of recent years have impacted most on poorer communities in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. There is a growing consensus that climate change is contributing to this instability. We have a moral duty to reduce our environmental impact on the planet, and in doing so to assist the most vulnerable on the planet.

Ciarán Cuffe is a lecturer in Planning at Dublin Institute of Technology and a former Green Party Minister of State

Blessed are the Cheese-makers

I was on the Sligo train yesterday morning to the Walking Matters Conference and missed Brendan Smith's interview on Morning Ireland, but I was delighted to hear that Irish cheese was in the headlines, albeit perhaps not for the best of reasons.

A fortnight ago I met some great Irish cheese-makers at the TerraMadre event in Turin. Terra Madre is held in conjunction with the Salone de Gusto in Italy every two years and is the brain-child of Carlo Petrini and others from the "Slow Food" movement. In essence it provides a focus on food that is "good, clean and fair." He first came to prominence in the 1980s for taking part in a campaign against the fast food chain McDonald's opening near the Spanish Steps in Rome. In more recent years he has brought more more than 6,000 delegates together to promote biodiversity, provide better food education and connect producers.

Given that I have responsibility for organics and horticulture in Brendan Smith's Department. I was keen to learn more about Petrini's work. Interestingly food, and food tourism has helped turn the city of Turin around. A generation ago Fiat employed 55,000 people in Turin manufacturing cars. These days it is closer to 5,000 and the City of Turin, and surrounding Province of Piemonte has made a conscious decision to create and sustain jobs through the food industry. It seems to be working and the strong media coverage of the Conferences showed the pride of the Region and the City in its transformation. There Irish Raw Milk Cheese Presidium had taken a stand to market seven great Irish Cheeses, and Bord Bia also had taken space to market some great Irish beef, lamb, salmon and cheeses. They also were showcasing some of the great new Irish artisan products such as Irish sea salt from the Beara peninsula in Cork, as well as relishes and mustards. Italy is the fourth largest market for Irish Agriculture and there was strong interest in sampling our exports.

I paid a visit on the Saturday morning to an enormous outside food market in one of the main squares of Turin, and it showed the tremendous scope for expansion for Irish farmers' markets to provide an alternative to the supermarket multiples. David McWilliams wrote in the Sunday Business Post recently that "The recovery will be more GAA than IDA, less bond market, more farmer's market", and I tend to agree.

I met up with Alice Waters the Californian chef and activist and we discussed the importance of healthy eating policies. Vandana Shiva was also there from India, and she discussed the connections between soil, ecology and human rights.

Closer to home Darina Allen was there wearing"Slow Food Ireland" hat, as well as Michael Kelly from the "Grow it Yourself" movement. While Darina has been a strong campaigner for Irish food for many years, the overnight success of Michael's campaigning has been fantastic. His campaign to get people growing more of their own food in an allottment or the back garden has really blossomed in the last few years.

I spoke at a "European Schools for Healthy Food" event on Sunday. While most Irish schools don't have their own canteens, we have introduced food into the curriculum through the Food Dudes and Agri-Aware's Incredible Edibles projects. In addition An Taisce through the Green Flag program has encouraged the development of school gardens as a way of introducing students to environmental issues.

The two days in Italy allowed Irish producers to learn more about selling quality food abroad, as well as learn from success stories around the world. Ireland's indigenous food sector, as Oliver Moore pointed out recently in the Irish Examiner, is a key to our recovery, and is demonstrating a very different kind of business model. Bord Bia is doing good work to assist new food businesses through their Vantage Program, and judging from Turin, there's huge scope for development. Not only are the cheese-makers blessed, they're out their creating jobs for Ireland.

The Pic? That's Ralph Haslam from Mossfield Farm, the overall winner at the Bord Bia Organic Awards this year sampling his amazing Gouda style cheese.

Joining the Dots

That's the view from the Limerick-Galway train looking out on the platform at Sixmilebridge on the 29th March.

The weather was absolutely miserable, but there were crowds on every platform welcoming the return of a train service linking the two cities by rail once more after a thirty-four year gap. That was my first 'official' engagement as the new Minister for State with responsibility for Sustainable Transport and Travel, and there was a great turn-out of support for the service in each of the stations that we passed through on the journey up from Limerick through Clare and up to Galway.

I've moved across the road from Leinster House and I'm now based in the Department of Transport on Kildare Street. The new job is, both wide-ranging and challenging. In a sense I'm trying to join up the dots on sustainability between the Departments of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food; Environment, Heritage and Local Government; and Transport. The official job title covers horticulture, sustainable transport and travel, planning and climate change.

In the Department of Transport there's a lot of projects slowly coming to fruition that have been around since the early nineties. The old Dublin Transportation Initiative report advocated integrated ticketing as well as real time passenger information, and hopefully I'll be able to push these issues along to implementation. There's also other opportunities. One challenge is the issue of rail freight. Tonnage has declined in recent years, and I'll be doing what I can to make the case for sending goods by rail where possible, in order to improve safety as well as reduce carbon emissions.

In agriculture it has been a tough winter after several years of wet summers. Last week the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food launched the new agri-environment scheme. It replaces the old Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) , and will make payments to farmers for their careful stewardship of the land such as protecting watercourses, and conserving birdlife and built heritage.This was my first formal introduction to the Department, and the agriculture media, so I made a point of stressing my agricultural credentials. My first job was on John Leeson's farm in South County Dublin - milking cows, snagging fodder beet and painting gates. Trevor Sargent has done great work over the last few years in building up the organic sector, promoting a GM-free island developing the 'incredible edibles' campaign as well as the food dudes, and it'll be a hard act to follow, but I'll be doing my best to continue with that work.

In the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government, I'll be focussing on steering the Planning Bill through the Oireachtas. A proper planning system can help Ireland avoid future boom-bust cycles by removing some of the 'hope value' from land. I'll also have an involvement in facing up to climate change, peak oil and energy security - three inter-twined issues that require a coherent approach as oil prices head back up again.

Last week we also had Dáil votes on the future of Ireland’s banking system. Politics is the art of the possible, not the theoretical. There are no quick-fix solutions to the mistakes that were made between 2005 and 2007. A friend rang me up to pass on the bad news about the architectural firm Murray O’Laoire going into liquidation. I explained that we have to recapitalize the banks so that good business proposals receive the cash they need to create jobs. Just before Easter I met with Professor Alan Ahearne, economics advisor to an Taoiseach. He impressed me with his coherent analysis of Ireland’s financial challenges.


It’s only as we start filling packing cases in my Dáil office that it finally sank in. I have a new job, new responsibilities and a wide-ranging brief covering agriculture, transport, planning, heritage and climate change. In the course of the week I’ve been down to the Customs House to meet up with their management team. I’ve attended my first press conference in Agriculture House with Minister Brendan Smith and Minister of State Sean Connick. I’ve also met the enthusiastic team running the Sustainable Transport and Travel office.


On Good Friday I was in the constituency office on Patrick Street in Dún Laoghaire reading the Green Party’s submission on proposals for the Deansgrange Local Area Plan. It would be easy to get distracted or spread myself too thinly with the many challenges in each of the three Departments that I cover. However, all politics is local politics as the late Senator Tip O’Neill once stated, and it is important to cover the bases in Dún Laoghaire, as well as working on global and national issues.