Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 20 June 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht

Climate Change: Discussion

3:35 pm

Photo of Luke FlanaganLuke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I concur with Deputy Mulherin's comments. We need to be a little careful before we rush into this because it might not be that simple for people in living in certain areas of the country.

With regard to abatement in the agriculture industry, I have followed the issue of anaerobic digestion for ten years but nothing has happened in this regard, particularly in the use of animal slurry. The benefits of addressing this is that the slurry would not be left in a tank stewing and pumping carbon into the atmosphere.

There are many other environmental benefits arising out of it, such as lessening by a considerable degree the chance of polluting water courses. There are thousands of plants for anaerobic digestion all over Europe, particularly in Austria and Germany. What is this country doing and what is the Department doing in respect of making this possible, because it is possible in other countries? If one can take a potentially harmful product, turn it into methane or bio-gas and be left with another by-product called a digestate that one can spread on the land and that has similar properties to bag fertiliser when it comes to fertilising land, surely we need to move in that direction. I am sure the Department is aware of the facility in Callan on the Tipperary-Kilkenny border where this is practised. It has not spread and I suggest that one of the reasons it has not spread is because people are a bit paranoid about waste management facilities being beside them. Given that the technology is proven and we do not need to pilot it anymore, has the Department considered going down the route of getting communities to do it themselves in a co-operative sense? This way, they do not see an advertisement in the paper telling them that an anaerobic digester is on the way; one week later, that an incinerator is on the way; and another week later, that something even worse is on the way. Has the Department looked at this because there is a massive resource there? When I looked at it originally, I found that something like one million tonnes of cow slurry are produced in County Roscommon every year. The potential for environmental damage and the loss of the potential for bio-gas is massive. What are the Department's plans in this regard?

I am loth to use the term "waste management" because it is a disgusting term. It should be renamed "resource management" because nothing is waste at this stage. We can reuse it. It is a debate that has become completely silent among politicians. I do not know whether it was debated more than ten years ago because powers were being taken off politicians in respect of the issue. Now that we seem to have got over the fact that we have lost those powers, we do not discuss it anymore. When it comes to climate change, one of the most important things is how we use our resources and the energy that goes into them. From the perspective of incinerators versus mechanical biological treatment, it seems we are going down the incinerator route. How does that fit with us reducing our carbon emissions? I know people will say it is better than landfill. Of course it is because anything is better than landfill. That was not even a technology. It was the technology of a dog burying his own dirt. What are the plans for that area? Some people will say it is better to put it in an incinerator and burn it to get energy rather than put it in landfill and get nothing out of it. One would get energy if one burned €100 bills as well but it is not a good enough argument to say we should burn them because we would get energy out of them. What is the Department's thinking on this because incineration is not sustainable? I will not go into the health aspect of it but from the point of climate change, incineration does not make sense. Incineration is based on the idea that there are infinite resources that we can keep burning, that they will go away and that we will pretend they do not exist anymore.

Perhaps somebody here could establish what a carbon tax is about because I was of the opinion that a carbon tax was something imposed on society and the money raised out of it was used to change habits. In other words, the money would be ring-fenced for public transport subsidisation and used to fund the transformation of houses into passive, carbon neutral houses. In the past month, I was involved in an argument with a member of the Green Party who told me that this money, remarkably, is for education, hospitals, etc. Perhaps I have got it wrong. What is the carbon tax for? If it is what I think it is, it is a very good idea in that while one is putting an extra financial burden on people, at the other end of the scale, their houses become less expensive to heat and it becomes less expensive to travel on public transport so it turns out to be revenue neutral for people. However, it appears this is not the case. It seems - I could be wrong - that the carbon tax is being used as another way to gather revenue to pay back our massive debts.

I have a suggestion in respect of the payment of the fuel allowance. At the moment, people in receipt of the allowance get it on a drip-drip basis, week by week. Could the Department look at giving it in a lump sum so that people could insulate their lofts and heat their houses for much less and there would be more gains the following year? I also picked up on the idea that we must all live very closely together. There appears to be a philosophy among environmentalists that we must all get out of the countryside because to get there requires energy and damages the planet so we should all stay away from the country and live in nice, compact units. That will be a massive struggle because we do not want to do that so one will have a big job changing that.

I am sure Dr. O'Connor knows this area inside out but something he said chimed negatively with me. What he said suggested that a considerable amount of box ticking is taking place. When a question was asked about what might happen if we do not reach our targets, Dr. O'Connor said there would be no cost to Ireland if we do not reach them. Is it about giving the impression that we are doing the right thing or is it about actually doing the right thing? Ultimately, it will be a cost to Ireland. Is it just the cost of looking bad or of not ticking a particular box about which we are worried? The philosophy should be that we should not have to be forced to do this. If we are going to do it and do it successfully, we must willingly do it ourselves. If we are going to do it on the basis that Europe or someone else makes us do it, we are less likely to do it. The best opportunity for success is for us to want to do it, for us and the Department to create the environment where it is easy for people to do it and where there is more of a focus on the idea of resources and not wasting resources. I fear that environmentalism is a dirty word, which is sad given that we have only one environment in which to live. I hope the Department will go about changing that attitude. There are ways to do that. That is my tuppence worth.

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