Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator.

I echo what Senator Garvey said on food production. Senator Ahearn referred to apple and pear growers in Munster and it is similar in north County Dublin. It is a great form of agriculture that helps us produce indigenous products and may be more climate friendly than other forms of food production.

We support the corporate sustainability due diligence directive in principle and think it is a good idea. Our Department will be the lead Department on it. It is done through the competitiveness council. The Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, attends that on behalf of the Department. We want to make sure we get it right and do not want to make it too onerous. There are a huge number of information obligations on businesses. We are adding new ones every day and do not want to go too far on that front. We want to make sure it is sensible and that we do not put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage relative to other countries but when it comes to issues such as child labour or environmental destruction, companies need to be exposed if they are engaging in such practices. We need to call out and expose greenwashing from companies. There are many things Irish people would not buy if they knew how and by whom they were manufactured. Having transparency around that is to everyone’s benefit.

Energy audits are a good idea. We offer grants and vouchers for businesses to get energy audits done, and want to increase the take-up of those. There are new LEO grants for businesses to act on those audits. There are many savings to be made. There are two obvious ones I have come across. One is open fridges, which I did not know much about until the students came in here and did their climate assembly in the Dáil. It was one of the ten things they put forward. I have met retailers who have cut their electricity bills by as much as 50% by covering their fridges. It is nice to be able to look into a fridge and not have to lift a lid but if those are the savings that can be achieved, we can all lift the lid. It is extraordinary to freeze the air. We should freeze the fridges and products in fridges, not the air around them.

I hope we will see a big uptake in solar from business and farmers. We are putting the grants in place and the Minister, Deputy Ryan, announced just the other day changes to the grants for business to make them more accessible. Planning rules have been changed too, so it will be much easier to put up a solar panel without planning permission.