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

I am very glad to be here in this august Chamber, which we always look forward to coming into. I love the armchairs, the comfort and the splendour. We do not have the same celestial ceiling above us in our own humble Chamber down the road. I am very glad to be here to to give some reflections and then to listen, more than anything else. I would reflect on the summer just gone by or even recent weeks. I was in the Dáil Chamber yesterday and one Deputy made a point that there has been flooding in Thurles for the third time in several years. The rain was heavier than anything previous so the storm surge joined with the wastewater system and sewage came up through the manholes and flooded the town again. That is just one example. Across the world, even as we speak, there are climate events hitting home now. That became very clear in a variety of ways this summer. In India there were temperatures above 40°C for over a month and 70% less rain. In the neighbouring country of Pakistan, a third of the country flooded.

The climate crisis is connected to the biodiversity and pollution crises. A recent analysis shows that we have lost 70% of wildlife. These things are connected. A fracturing ecosystem will make it even more difficult for us to cope with the climate change that is coming. I was in Berlin last week at a climate justice event involving Professor Johan Rockström from the Potsdam Institute, which is probably one of the best climate research institutes in the world. He had a simple graph that showed that within 50 years, there will be large swathes of the world, in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan and India, where the annual average temperatures will be above 30°C. The simple fact he presented was that this will directly impact habitability and the health of people. This summer has been a wake-up call.

The Acting Chair mentioned Greta Thunberg. She recently wrote an article for the New Statesmanin which she rightly excoriated the political system for not responding to this crisis and for what she calls greenwashing, where people talk it up but do not really deliver. She speaks for a lot of younger people. For me, in 50 years' time it will be my children and their children who have to manage that, but for the young people here today they are going to have to manage this in their lifetime. I can understand the anger behind that. I only saw Ms Thunberg speak once, at a COP meeting in Madrid some years ago. She said in the article the same thing she said at that meeting. She said she was a democrat and that, even though she is critical of the political system, she believes and recognises that the only just, fair and sustainable way of responding to this is through democratic systems. It is not the only way but it is the best. I agree with her on that. That is why the witnesses' presence here in our institutions is important. There has been some progress in this the last five to seven years, particularly in the way we have used citizens' assemblies. The democratic system does not just have to be these two Chambers. It can and must be a participative democratic system. The Citizens' Assembly on Climate Change, which was six or seven years ago now, did a very useful job in presenting the evidence and coming up with recommendations. That led to the structures we have put in place, the climate law and the climate action plans we have. They are rooted in that.

It is appropriate to be here on a Friday because in that intervening period, every single Friday outside the gates here we saw the Fridays for Future school strikes. Sometimes there were small numbers and sometimes huge. That is part of the democratic system. It is about the engagement in protest, being there, turning up and taking the space to have your voice heard. That Fridays for Future movement played a huge role, not just because of Greta Thunberg but the people here, in influencing the political democratic response in this Republic. I would just like to mark and recognise that. That translates into so many different things. We could talk about energy, transport or food. What the democratic institutions and structures do is translate that imperative and ambition into law, into a budget and resources, including human resources and staffing for local authorities and elsewhere.

I will finish with two other reflections. In our response, in reducing our emissions and managing the adaptation we are going to have to do, the biggest thing we have to do is mobilise ourselves as people. In my area at the moment, the biggest shortage is in people to do the work. We need to get the training and the skills right and develop the skills and apprenticeships. In agriculture, it is about getting a whole generation of young people to go into farming and forestry. It is a question of how we make that pay and make it viable so you can have a rewarding prospect of raising a family when running a farm. That is our focus. We can sometimes get caught up in all the technical aspects but it is about how we can inspire people to take on the work that needs to be done.

When trying to get people to do certain work or to switch their habits and change what they are buying or doing, we should not be guilt-tripping them about doing the right thing, buying the right thing or whether they drive or not. That will not work. People have to be inspired but we also have to change the systems so it is easier for people to do the right thing. We should change the educational system so it is easy for people to develop the necessary skills and find career opportunities. If we put all the pressure and responsibility on what individuals do, it will not work. It is about changing the system so it is easier for us all to make this leap and change. That is what the democratic system is charged with doing. Society has to organise itself to allocate the resources to change the systems. We are part of this transition. We will inspire each other by focusing on the fact that these new systems have to have social justice at their core. We need to be living in a natural world that is wonderful, beautiful and sustainable and raises our spirits, as well as dealing with the practical realities of the climate challenge we face. I look forward to hearing what others have to say. I thank the Acting Chair for this special committee hearing.