Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Tánaiste on the progress he has made on workers' rights, consumers' rights and legislation on anti-competitive practices in a very difficult time. At the risk of raising the ire of my colleague Deputy Shanahan, I have to say that not long after TalkTalk closed in the south east, one of the initiatives we took involved the creation of regional enterprise plans. This was because we recognised every region had different competitive advantages and that you had to play to their strengths. Regions are making progress as a result of that initiative. I am delighted to hear €180 million is being devoted to this.

I would like to raise a few issues of concern to me. I will comment on the low take-up of the 2020 energy efficiency schemes. It is incumbent on the Government to have a national import energy resilience initiative that examines much more seriously our excessive dependence on energy imports. Our ambition is to halve our dependence on fossil fuels by 2030 and eliminate them altogether by 2050. However, we have a lot of low-hanging fruit that neither businesses nor households are taking advantage of, for example, smart controls, smart meters, shallow first retrofits, sharing platforms, switching platforms, storage opportunities, solar opportunities, switching modes to electric vehicles, and charging points. I could list dozens of measures that could be put in place by local authorities, the Government and businesses if they had a strategic approach, in addition to supports for householders so they can do the same. We really need to take it seriously because the Ukraine crisis is not going to end quickly, nor are the energy and climate crises that underpin it. That is the first strong call. We need to see businesses taking the lead, with sectoral strategies to achieve that.

That brings me to my second point, which is that we are overlooking and downgrading the opportunity of the so-called circular economy approach to transforming how we see our sectors and build their competitive strengths for the future. The idea associated with the circular economy is to examine the entire supply chain and seek to take out the damage that is done.

That includes climate damage but also pollution, excessive use of plastic and excessive damage to biodiversity.

One big advantage of this approach is it is non-confrontational and problem-solving, whereas much of the debate about climate is a finger-pointing exercise that involves complaining about people not pulling their weight, when we need to approach this in a collective way. About 80% of environmental damage is baked in at the design stage, so if we start to get businesses rethinking the way they approach their sector, whether that is construction, food, fast fashion or whatever, and thinking about how the sector and the markets are structured, we can get transformative change that is not very expensive. It absolutely makes sense for Ireland to take a lead in this area. It has been downgraded and is not included as a platform in the climate plan, and has instead been put into a siding where just the Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to be developing programmes, but that agency does not have the leverage to drive the sectoral changes that are necessary.

I have congratulated the Tánaiste on the national minimum wage, the living wage, the auto-enrolment scheme, the sick pay scheme, the protection of tips, the remote working Bill and so on. Is there an issue for SMEs and the pressure it may put on some of those more vulnerable companies as we seek to draw lessons from the underprotection of people in the past? How can we strike that balance and ensure we phase this in a way whereby smaller businesses can manage that transition? What thinking is going into that?