Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I apologise that I was not able to listen to much of the earlier discussion. I was busy with something else in this place. This is a very important issue. It is of particular interest in my area because there are plans for a very significant offshore renewable energy development off the east coast. As anybody who is concerned about the climate crisis we are facing knows, the starting point is that we have to rapidly develop renewable energy resources to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use and save the planet from disaster. We have to do that as a matter of urgency. People Before Profit is very committed to the idea that we must do that. However, the particular model this and previous Governments have pursued for the development of offshore renewable energy is very problematic.

It is problematic, first, because we are going to hand over these resources, by and large or almost entirely, to private companies such as the French state energy company. The idea that our natural resources are going to be handed over to private companies and that the French state is going to benefit more from offshore renewable wind than the people of this country seems absolutely crazy. These developers and these international for-profit energy companies have no obligation whatsoever to provide us with security of supply or to give us energy at affordable prices. In fact, as we have seen in the recent cost-of-living crisis, much of which was driven by energy price hikes, these companies are more than willing to profiteer off the back of energy shortages or issues in the market and to generate very significant cost-of-living crises for ordinary people. We have a fundamental problem with the fact that we are handing over these resources to private for-profit companies rather than the State developing its own renewable energy resources to benefit the people of this country, our society, while also addressing the urgent climate question.

The other very important point is that we do not just have a climate crisis, but also a biodiversity emergency. This second emergency is often less focused upon but it is arguably as urgent as, if not more urgent than, the climate crisis because the possibility of whole ecosystems collapsing because we are destroying biodiversity - in this case, marine life - and not paying enough regard to protecting the marine means that we could end up cutting off our nose to spite our face. I mean that very seriously.

It is worth pointing out that 50% of the world's oxygen comes from phytoplankton in the sea. That was not something I knew until I became familiar with this matter but phytoplankton grows in shallow water because it needs sunlight. This is the stuff of life. It is literally the reason there is life on the planet. If we destroy marine biology, our marine environment and marine biodiversity, we will remove the basis for human existence and the existence of life on the planet. Why do I mention that? It is because, if relatively shallow water is important, then sandbanks are very important.

Under the habitats directive, this is recognised and they are protected. I think it is under Annex I that it is recognised how important sandbanks are. They are also incredibly important in protecting the coast against erosion, which is another feature of climate change with rising sea levels and so on. One of the big protections of the coastal environment are sandbanks. Yet where will we put these massive industrial wind farms? It will be on sites dictated by private developers and not based on sustainable marine spatial planning. We will put them on sandbanks, precisely the sensitive and vulnerable environments that are also the spawning grounds for many of the fish which provide livelihood for our fishers.

The fishers I am in contact with work out of Dún Laoghaire, Wicklow and along the east coast, where there are about 800 jobs, direct and indirect, including the fishers and workers in processing and other related industries. They talk about the possibility of the Kish and Codling bank renewable energy plans going ahead on the banks. The seismic survey has started and is already seriously damaging their livelihood and impacting fish and marine life in those areas. They say, to cut a long story short, it will completely destroy their livelihood, which is illegal under EU directives. One of the things EU directives make clear is you cannot displace one industry with another. It is not allowed, yet it is happening because the Government has given a pass with the so-called "relevant projects" for hundreds of enormous wind turbines to be built in close proximity to the coast on sandbanks and sensitive areas which are rich in marine life and phytoplankton, which, I repeat, is the basis of life on this planet. If we destroy those ecosystems, the biodiversity emergency will hit us quicker and harder than even the climate emergency, serious as that is.

We were supposed to protect these areas with the marine protected areas. The average in most of Europe is 30%. The Netherlands are up around 40% and Germany is around 50% protected. We had about 3% protected up to a few years ago; now it is up to about 7%. We are at the bottom of the league table for protecting the sensitive areas necessary for biodiversity. We have given the sites that should be protected from a marine biodiversity point of view to the developers and given them a pass on maritime planning. They should have to pass certain thresholds in terms of protection of the environment and habitats. Apart from anything else, that will probably open most of these industrial wind farm plans to legal action and they will probably find themselves in breach of the habitats directive and other EU marine spatial planning directives. In on-land development and planning in the bad old days, developers did what the hell they liked. We got building on flood plains, the damage that caused and the flooding that resulted. We are about to repeat the same mistakes in the development of offshore renewable energy. We give it to the speculators and private developers and wreck the environment in the process; in the end, we do not even get any of the benefits.

We need to develop this. It should be done by the State on a not-for-profit basis and in line with the directives and with the environmental obligation to protect vital areas of biodiversity, marine biology and so on. That means doing it on a not-for-profit basis and not letting them dictate and it means the State investing in doing it, most likely further offshore. It might be more costly but, in the end, it is more sustainable from an environmental and every other point of view.

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