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

The outcome of COP is complicated. Michael Mann, that very eminent and brilliant climate scientist and campaigner, spoke at the EPA last night. One of the things he said was that we should be careful about talking down the international completely. This is in the interests of the fossil fuel companies. It is what they do so that people give up and despair. Yes, the last-minute change in the wording regarding the phasing out of coal was deeply gutting but that was a political cover decision. Beneath that in the real dense legal text were significant developments such as the signing off on the Paris rule book, agreeing carbon trading arrangements and in particular, commitments to double climate adaptation finance. In that, we were able to take a very particular active role and could do so because our Taoiseach arrived on the first day and we committed to what was already a very successful adaptation programme we do involving all direct grants - about €100 million per year in climate finance. We committed to more than double our climate finance support - to a 140% increase over the next five years.

That is an important element. A key issue coming out of Glasgow is that we start to see climate justice being taken seriously by the developed world as we start to accelerate and do the emissions reduction. It is the same here at home, Deputy O'Sullivan is correct. We need to be seen to be active. Some of the projects will not be as far away as people think. The metropolitan rail project in Cork is real. It is starting now and it is fully funded under the European recovery fund. There will be a twin track from Midleton to Kent Station with new stations and new regular services. That is being worked on this year, next year and the year after. That is very real and there are numerous examples like it. The Deputy is also correct, though, it needs to be brought back home and down local. I will refer back to the EirGrid study, Shaping our Electricity Futures, published last week. The company set up its consultation. Most politicians will understand this. A key issue to emerge that informed its plan was the need for microgeneration. For too long, that has been put back, delayed and difficult to deliver, but we are on the cusp of delivering it within months. It is three phases. First will be the ability to sell power back to the grid and export unwanted electricity at the wholesale market rate. The second phase is to allow for some of the funding I mentioned for community energy or on-farm development, school buildings or businesses to be invested in larger microgeneration projects and to get a steady price for that that makes the economics work. That is central to what is known in our targets as diversification, particularly for farming communities. Diversification of incomes in farming will be key. That second phase, coming in months, will be critical. It will take slightly longer for the third phase, which will be up to 1 MW of power; that is larger projects. That also has a role in this real distributed, citizens-engaged revolution that needs to be in our energy generation. That is now agreed policy, going through the final legal checking system, with all the regulations to be ready to go in early January, and it will start in early January.

Anaerobic digestion is very similar. It has great potential for alternative incomes for Irish farming. It has to fit into the national land use plan because everything that we do in climate has to be biodiversity-proofed and water pollution-proofed as well. We do not want to end up with massive volumes of anaerobic digestion and the knock-on consequences of managing water pollution and ammonia pollution that comes with it. I can envisage a farm where half the grass would go to feed an anaerobic digester and the other half to feed a herd of cattle, the slurry from which would also feed into the anaerobic digester. It is the sort of example where there would be a smaller number of cattle, leading to a reductions in emissions but a significant increase in income to the farmer. Now, it is not cheap. We would have to provide a guaranteed price to make the economics work, but it is an example of the sort of diversification measures in the agriculture industry that we need to do to make everything work.

Finally, the new rural public bus system is critical. We provided the funding next year to roll out the first phase. There is a €57 million plan over five years to be comprehensive about how we do this across the country. However, that is only the start. We need to start looking at innovative ways in rural and urban Ireland where we have new public transport systems that connect to other State uses and needs, be it the health or education systems, that use technology in innovative ways. Therefore, this is only the start. In truth, in the plan the hardest area to change is transport because we have such a stitched-in development model. We need innovation in our public transport system. I encourage people to get involved in that consultation on the right moves that are connected to other public transport services such as health and education and to use innovation to deliver for rural public transport users as well as urban.