Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh na finnéithe. It is very important that we have this opportunity to talk about sustainable development goals. I used to teach about them in schools for many years, and do workshops to introduce the concepts, because the vocabulary around them is quite interesting. It is not the best vocabulary I would use for getting things across the line, and for people understanding it, but I think they are really important.

For somebody who is a Green Party Senator and former county councillor, and an environmental education officer for many years with Green Schools, I wonder how the witnesses see the roles of the local authorities in all of this. There is some minor support for Green Schools in the local authorities but, beyond that, I am not sure I would see it as being vital that our local authorities have a very strong role to play in implementing our sustainable development goals. It should be across all the departments in the local authorities. What I have learned as a Senator is that even when a Department has a recommendation, it does not always necessarily come down to the local authorities; the grassroots has always been where change has come.

I know there is now a biodiversity officer in most places thanks to the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Malcolm Noonan. There are now climate teams. However, if it is nobody's job to implement the sustainable development goals, it will be everybody's job and nobody's job. That is a huge issue I have worries about. We have biannual meetings, as national representatives in Clare, with our directors of service and CEO, and nobody has ever mentioned sustainable development goals except me. It has never been brought up with us. I have huge concerns about it actually filtering down on some local level, or it being shoved into "yes, that is in the whole climate thing". Our biodiversity sits in one directorate, separate to climate, which is also quite bizarre. If we are serious about it, I wonder if the witnesses had any plans to come up with ways of forcing us to make local authorities take the sustainable development goals seriously. I know the environmental awareness officer herself does a lot of good work on it, but I feel like she is doing it in a silo as opposed to it being a whole-council initiative.

I would like to talk about something that came up earlier. I had to go to the Seanad to talk about water quality with the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Kieran O'Donnell, for a Commencement matter. I was in Inisheer recently, and I know that a lot of the islands suffer from water quality issues, and not having access to water, but Irish Water has zero plans to do any rainwater harvesting, for example. I do not know why this is not happening, and we are definitely missing a trick there, because water comes into the sustainable development goals. Rainwater can be used for so many things and, if treated with ultraviolet, UV light, it can be used for everything. I also saw a great digital hub in Inisheer, which I think is something that should be mandatory if we want people to have some way of getting access to broadband. I think one of the Deputies said it earlier. I know in Inisheer, the community officers there have done great work in getting a very successful digital hub that I am planning to use myself this summer.

The main thing, for me, is the local authorities. We talk about the islands and ask why there is not community composting, or why there is not community rainwater harvesting. On waste management, some of the ferry companies are not giving a single penny to the islands, and they are making millions out of bringing people to the islands. Should we be looking at a policy where a mandatory percentage of profits would be given back to the islanders? I was talking to a businessman on one of the islands, and the community approached the ferry company, which said that it was up to the local authorities. That is an issue as well, because we know when we have thousands of people coming to the islands, it is not "leave no trace", it is "leave everything behind you".

It is the opposite to leaving no trace. There is no policy about people bringing all their rubbish home with them. The ferry companies charge everybody loads of money to take them to the islands but are not responsible in any way for the footprint of this. This is something we have to look at if we are speaking about-----