Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 59:

In page 31, after line 36, to insert the following: “(b) the climate and biodiversity emergency as well as national climate policies, legislation and objectives, including the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021,”.

I welcome amendment No. 58, which goes some way to addressing the concerns this amendment was intended to deal with. This is also an especially powerful place to insert the provision regarding the "promotion and use of the Irish language", and I also welcome that. Reference was made in the Minister's amendment to "environmental development and sustainability". I accept that point, but there is a place here to mention specific policy obligations regarding climate change. Section 33(4)(a) refers to "any national policies that are relevant to the strategy", but we must view this whole context within the framework of the enormous environmental challenge coming down the tracks. It would be appropriate, somewhere in this proposed legislation, to refer specifically to these "national climate policies, legislation and objectives, including the Paris Agreement [...] and the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021".

The Minister is not in the business of listing every Act in the context of national policy that could have a bearing on this Bill, but this is a more serious and overarching matter. It will have to specifically inform education in future, especially concerning sustainability. He has a great commitment to the development of the trades, and I refer to that aspect as well, and to the type of research and innovation that will be required in future to allow us to face up to the climate challenges in front of us. Therefore, while welcoming what is set out in amendment No. 58, we could go further in specifically detailing and mentioning the climate challenge and the framework within which we must operate in facing up to that.