Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have been listening and I find this debate, if I might call it that, very interesting and informative. I thank both organisations for their presentations. I will not go back over old ground but I want to touch initially on public transport. Coming from a rural constituency, I know the vagaries of transport and the hit-and-miss efforts that can be made in trying to provide it. The reality is that in rural Ireland, in many cases, there is no other mode of transport except for the car. If, therefore, we are to shift the mode of transport to public transport, we need to be serious about how we are going to do it. A project that Deputy Leddin will know well, for instance, is the western rail corridor, which could do an awful lot to improve connectivity along the west coast. If there is going to be a signal that public transport infrastructure will be dealt with in a serious way, this is one sure way of doing it in a very quick manner to make sure we have transport we can use. It is very important that we do that.

I spoke in the Dáil last night on climate action. I cited the case of Bus Éireann, which right now is cutting some of its services because it cannot afford to run them. The reality is that is what is happening. The reality is that the carbon tax, while necessary, penalises people who have no other choice but to use a car that burns fossil fuel at the moment. They do not have the infrastructure in terms of the charging points and the cost of electric vehicles is prohibitive.

To touch on farming, I believe that farmers are very much of the opinion that they are doing an awful lot right. They feel in general that they are being targeted. One of the reasons I feel they are being targeted is because we are not an industrialised country and therefore the emissions, when one measures them, are in a higher bracket. We are first in class in dairy production in Europe. We are fifth in class in beef production. We must build on that. We must take the carbon emissions from agriculture, ring-fence them and deal with them in isolation rather than putting them into the global pot.

Having been a member of a local authority since 2004, I find that planning can be a huge problem, whether it be for a wind farm, solar farm or someone doing something that fits in with the green agenda and climate action, with which I agree. Our planning situation, however, is such that in certain places, especially in Connemara, people cannot build. Some of the places are designated in the west of Ireland. We might say we have a vision, which is great, but at the same time, we cannot realise that vision unless we actually change policies to make sure that we give preference. We might have to make some hard decisions about where we would locate things such as wind farms.

The other issue I will touch on is this area of just transition. Deputy Durkan gave the example of changing his heating system. The reality is that if a person wants to put air to water heating into a standard type house in this country, it will cost €25,000, with approximately €3,500 of a grant. Unfortunately, therefore, a person has a lot of work to do to raise the rest of the money to do that. I know because I have just done it. I do not know whether it will benefit me yet because I will have to see it running for a year or two to get the cost right. I was lucky enough that I could get access to a loan to do that.

At the moment, we are rolling out the better energy homes schemes for people on fuel allowance to try to improve energy efficiency in their houses. The problem is that people wait for two years for an engineer to come to the site to tell them what they are entitled to or what can be done to improve the house. In the past, we did schemes where the building energy rating, BER, never improved. Works were carried out but the BER was not included.

What galls me about much of what we spoke about is that sometimes people make decisions and say they are right decisions. One of the most fundamental decisions we made, which was a wrong decision to make, was closing our sugar industry in this country. That actually removed a huge part of the treatment of tillage farming in the west of Ireland and right across the country. That is now painfully missed. Not alone did we close it but we rushed to demolish the factories as quickly as we could afterwards in case anybody would ever attempt to produce sugar again.

When we run with these ideas, we must also listen. This is the biggest issue arising from yesterday and from talking about climate action the last couple of weeks. Mr. McCabe mentioned that he went around in a van for six weeks speaking to farmers. I have spoken to them. They have been talking to the powers that be but feel they are not being listened to and that what they are saying is not being acted upon. That is creating a divide we do not need; the notion that somebody is out to get them. Listening is one thing. Taking in what is being said is the second and the third is then to react in a way that everybody is brought along and we are all in this together, like we have been during the Covid pandemic.

Having said that, this is the only thing I want to know. We are here in our capacity as the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. We are going to have to find the money in this country to fund this climate action. Does anybody know how much it will cost, where we will get the money and how we will pay it back? The payback will be there for young people, the country and whatever else.

The co-operative movements are fine but not compared to what they were in the past. They are now full up with paperwork, compliance and all those types of things. Nobody will touch them because they are too cumbersome.

People will run away from this type of stuff, such as procurement. It is concerning that we are passing a Bill and we do not know what will be the cost.