Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The last point is an important and welcome one. We are now on the path to legislating for this. Given we are on Committee Stage and given the numbers of Members who supported it on Second Stage in the Dáil, it means we will legislate for this. It is a real achievement by Deputy Pringle, Trócaire and others. My compulsion is that we get it right. It is a complicated process and some of the Minister of State's amendments are beneficial in terms of the technical nature of drafting legislation.

I will make a number of points in response to Deputy Pringle's opening statement. There has been a fair bit of commentary about this Bill. Why is it the environmental movement is going with this divestment tack? Why is this a big deal? One of the reasons it is a big deal is because for 30 or 40 years the environmental movement has been hammering people at the end of the supply chain. We have been putting all the pressure on consumers asking if they are using the right products and being responsible. We have been asking if people have the right car or phone, for example, in terms of the materials that are used in it. There is a broad realisation that the approach is not getting us very far. It is shaming people and making them feel guilty. It is not working because we have not achieved the switch away from fossil fuels which we have to do urgently. There is a broad strategic sense led by organisations such as 350.org and others that we need to start addressing the start of the pipeline and the fossil fuel supply chain and switch it off. We should do it confident in the knowledge that the alternative, renewable, energy efficiency systems, including the digital, transport and clean energy revolutions that are taking place, are part of the burgeoning new economy where anyone who is in any way smart should be investing. This is the new industrial revolution. This is a better, more efficient and cleaner economy and it is where all the money is going. People in the know know this is happening. It is only a small part of the economy but if one looks at the margin of investment changes, it is everything. A total of 90% of new investment is going into this clean area. Money going into the old legacy area is just the dregs and the last of that.

That is what we are doing. This is part of a global divestment movement. It is a fundamentally important approach to the issue of tackling climate change. Even since the Bill was introduced by Deputy Pringle, there are other examples such as the Norwegian sovereign investment fund which owns 1.5% of global stocks. It is not small. It is, admittedly, a fund built up on the basis of oil. It is a bit rich sometimes when the Norwegians and Scandinavians tell us what goody two shoes they are. That fund is divesting from all fossil fuels.

They have indicated they are going to do it later this year. The UK Government said in December that it will change its entire pension fund rules. The UK has £2 trillion in pension fund investments and it says it is changing the rules so that people can do fossil fuel divestment. We are not on our own in doing this, as neighbouring countries want to do it at scale. We have an urgent need to do it because our reputation, unfortunately, is dire when it comes to climate change, sometimes wrongly, because we are not bad at it as a country. There are loads of things we are really good at, but our reputation is shot because the Government in the past seven years, in particular, has been acting against climate action in every international arena. In the European Union negotiations, we used all our political capital to give agriculture a buy-out on climate. In the European clean energy and new market governance rules and new renewables directives the Government is taking an anti-climate change position and action on every file, despite the fact that we are really good at this new transition economy. The Government needs to start showing some leadership and change.

While I welcome that the Government has accepted the Bill and that it will be enacted, a couple of things the Minister of State said about the amendments really sound the wrong note. It was as if I was listening to Shell when I heard him say that gas is the transition fuel. I am sorry, but that is not the case. An Oireachtas delegation went to the UN climate negotiations in Bonn last year and we got a presentation from priceofoil.org, which is an international consultancy looking at what exactly it will mean to meet the targets set in the Paris climate agreement. There was a clear assessment based on a scientific analysis on what was agreed in Paris and what would need to be done to meet it. It shows that even existing oil and gas fields and coal mines - not including new ones - will have to be restricted. In other words, it is not just the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, it is the working mines, oil fields and gas fields. If we are serious about meeting the climate targets agreed in Paris we are not going to use all of that oil, gas, coal and peat. In that context, it is not correct to depict gas as a great, clean part of climate transition. Any country that takes that line is siding with the Russians, the Saudis and the Shells of this world. It hollers "God, these people do not get it" to anyone interested in climate change.

We will use gas for the next 20 to 30 years because we have a lot of new combined cycle power gas plants and they provide us with a balancing facility and we will import gas and we will use whatever is in the Corrib field for the next five to ten years but we will not get any more gas from our own waters. We have to manage that, but we will not be doing any new gas projects. The fact that we are building new gas networks in the midlands is one of the examples of how this Government does not get climate change. The fact that the Government is even considering a liquified natural gas, LNG, terminal in Shannon and in Cork is an indication that it does not get it. I am sorry about that. The Government is not part of the new clean energy revolution. It is doing damage to our country's reputation. Gas is not a new, clean energy transition fuel. It is highly polluting. Increasingly, international research shows that because methane has such an incredibly high climate change effect, although it is short term, means that gas is not a transition fuel and it should be included with the other fossil fuels. We should keep this simple. It should be all fossil fuels. I am sorry but the Minister of State's amendment just does more damage to our reputation. Hopefully, if we get it right this will be used as a message that Ireland is turning around and going green and we are leading the way. In doing that we will attract a huge amount of fund industry and financial services expertise here because we have it here in clean energy solutions. We attract it here because we are seen as being good at this. We would restore our reputation, which we can do, but we will not do it if we are talking about gas as a clean option because it is not. One cannot say that if one is interested in and serious about climate change.

In terms of all the complications the Minister of State cited about the funds, and having a differential rate for various fossil fuels, but it is a case of no more fossil fuels. All of them must be gone. It is not possible to say coal is worse than peat which is worse than oil and to have a league table of good and bad fossil fuels, they will all have to go if we are serious about this, and if we are serious about it then the new economy will blossom. As a country we are really well placed to develop that and to attract huge international funds into this country and manage it and be good at it. Let us be good at it. Let us not be like Shell or the former Soviet Union, which is what the Minister of State's comments at the start sounded like to me.