Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending. As I usually do when we deal with this issue, I refer to the IPCC report. It is worth couching everything we do at the committee in the words of the report which stated that we need far-reaching, unprecedented and radical change. When the fanfare dies down, one has to look past the layers of green clothing that mask a business opportunity for industry, corporations and, in particular, private finance. The Government's report referred to the phasing out of our reliance on fossil fuels. Is the Government going to continue to block the Bill calling for an end to the issuing of exploration licences? Can the Minister explain how, if we are to phase out our reliance on fossil fuels, we can continue to support the development of runways and airports? Indeed, the report does not look at the aviation industry at all. There is no measure within it regarding the aviation industry's contribution to emissions. We are supporting new runways and the development of LNG terminals. That contradicts fundamentally the aims set out in the report.

An issue that really jumped out at me is the absence of any attempt to put the burden of dealing with the crisis on global corporations in the fossil fuel and food industries which make billions in profit. The burden is entirely placed on changing individual behaviour, including individuals who are as well off as the Minister or as poor as the Travellers I met this morning who are dealing with fuel and energy poverty at halting sites. The Government has committed to attracting data centres to Ireland and it is estimated that 30% of our energy production will go to keeping those centres open. The solution proposed is to urge and plan for corporate power purchasing agreements, which are described as long-term contracts under which a business agrees to purchase electricity directly from an energy generator. Where did the idea come from to litter the country with data centres using up 30% of overall energy production and most of our water while being powered privately by energy companies dotted around the State? It did not come from the Citizens' Assembly or the joint committee. Did it come from someone the Minister knows such as a former head of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform or a Secretary General in the Department of Finance? It strikes me as a business plan writ large that would do more to damage our capacity to reduce emissions.

I agree with Deputy Eamon Ryan on the woeful attempt to deal with public transport. In fact, there is no attempt to deal with it. I heard the Chairman explain that on TV3 last night by saying it was all contained in the capital development plan. However, that is not so. That plan commits itself only to BusConnects which, for example, only puts a couple of hundred more buses on the roads in Dublin than were taken off the road during the austerity years. There is nothing there to help us deal with what is required, namely a massive increase in frequent, free, or at least much cheaper, public transport in every town and village and not just in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Limerick. Unless we provide that, people will rely on their cars. They have no choice. During the election campaign, I listened to Saoirse McHugh, who became a very popular figure overnight because she was so radical and passionate about climate change. She was a Green Party candidate in the west in the recent European elections. She described her life on Achill Island noting that there was one bus out in the morning and one back in the evening. Her house is 200 years old. She asks how she can cut down on her carbon emissions if she does not have proper public transport and help to retrofit her house. It will continue to require burning coal to heat her home and diesel to run her car. That is where the bulk of Irish society is at.

Despite all the commitment to private financial loans being available left, right and centre to people, the vast majority of people in this country - in middle Ireland, as it is often described - cannot afford to take out loans of €40,000, €50,000 or €60,000 to retrofit their homes. Middle Ireland cannot afford to borrow to buy an electric car in the morning and start paying back the loans. Most people struggle to pay their mortgage, rent and to get to work in overly expensive private transport because public transport is not available to them. This is a disaster of a plan. I will quote a part of the Minister's plan which sums up the attitude of his Department:

... those inflicting the damage do not pay the cost of the damage they inflict. This is the rationale for charging a carbon price for carbon emissions which reflects the growing damage that they are inflicting. This serves to discourage emissions and to make carbon abatement more profitable.

I would agree with that statement if it applied to the fossil fuel corporations and global corporations that abuse this planet through the overproduction of plastics, goods, oil and gas and then force us all into situations in which we use these products. However, it does not refer to them but to ordinary people in this country who the Minister says must change their behaviour, while giving them no help to do so except to tell them to go to the private financial market. The IFSC will gloriously come up with innovative ways to deal with this. Was it not great when it came up with innovative ways to help companies to evade tax and to create Ireland as a tax haven? This is a very damaging document when one looks at the lack of an attempt to really deal with the problem. Colleagues have spoken about electric vehicles but I do not understand how, in ten years, the Minister is going to get almost 1 million electric vehicles into this country. The production and importation of those vehicles somewhere on that planet, though maybe not here, will create a massive amount of carbon. We instead need a massive amount of public transport that is frequent and free.

With regard to retrofitting homes, three families came to me in my clinic on Monday. I have written to the Minister about this and have his replies. In one case, the family is earning €5 per week more than what would qualify them to be determined as living in fuel poverty according to the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. They are not entitled to a fuel allowance because of €5 extra per week. In the other cases, it was €7 and €7.50 extra each week, yet they are families who live to the pin of their collars to try to heat their homes. They must turn on the gas, burn the coal or the peat briquettes because they have no other choice. In most of those cases, they also have varying health issues such as arthritis or lung disease but they do not qualify for an allowance. Nothing in the Minister's document deals with them or with the Traveller community which launched a report on fuel poverty among Travellers this morning. I was the only Deputy who attended that. They invited four different Ministers and they were all unable to attend. It was a disgraceful abuse of a community that we celebrated in this House just a couple of years ago.

The best thing that we could do, instead of passing a motion that declares a climate emergency, is to pass a legislation, as the Government passed financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation during the financial crisis. Let us pass climate emergency measures in the public interest that will allow us to borrow massively at a very cheap rate for the country to invest in publicly-owned renewable sources, not to put it out for tender to the private market to see what company might be able to build offshore or onshore energy generators. Have we not learned about private tendering from the broadband and children's hospital examples? If one wants something done in this State, the State must take it by the short and curlys and do it itself. This document does nothing about that. It throws the responsibility entirely back at the market which is responsible for putting the globe in the danger that it is in already.

I ask the Minister to specifically address where the idea came from that date centres would somehow be a great solution to reducing emissions or helping our society or economy. Where did the idea of corporate purchase power agreements for electricity come from? In ten years, how will the Minister deal with the question of nearly 1 million electric vehicles being purchased in the country when the majority of people cannot afford to buy one? Will he comment on the lack of any mention in this document of aviation emissions and the support he is giving to introducing new runways?