Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome and thank the Minister. I thank his officials as well for coming along today. I wish to get back to the overall purpose of the Department being here, which is around our obligations and role with regard to the climate Act.

Looking at the climate action plan for 2023, and the annex of actions in that regard, the Minister's Department is the lead one in ten of those and is associated with many more. What is quite frustrating for me is that without roadmaps, and without the completion of some of those roadmaps, it is very difficult to interrogate what is happening. Would it be possible to have representatives of the Department appear before this committee again once these roadmaps have been published to enable us to ask about what has happened compared with the annex of actions? This is the frustration I have now. As a result of that situation, we tend to then focus on very specific things, when, ultimately, we are trying to achieve decarbonisation very quickly.

I will take up some of the points raised by Deputy Bruton. It is very frustrating when we see the level of engagement by businesses. I remember when we had previous sessions devoted to the circular economy. What was made clear then was that businesses flourish through regulations because they put everyone on a level playing field. When we push back too much of the responsibility onto individual, and often, very small companies, to step forward and to apply for funding, then too much is going onto those individual enterprises. Much more needs to be done to support the entire enterprise sector.

I wish to focus on the issue of timber for construction. I visited the timber engineering research group in Galway University with the Minister of State, Senator Hackett. One of the things that group would love would be for Ireland to fully embrace having, and a pilot may not be the right word in this context, something that will demonstrate timber's ability in construction. We know that, often, those who are the first movers are the ones who have financial difficulty. Can something be done to support businesses to undertake pilot projects to demonstrate the uses of timber in construction? I know this has been done in other countries. The type of wood we grow in Ireland has a different density than in other parts of Europe, and this may mean it might be better used in some parts of construction than in others. Having seen, however, the pressure Irish wood can take, I think it is time to look at the regulations. One advantage we have is that our wood grows very fast, which is not something countries in other parts of Europe have because of the climate. Is there something innovative that could be done in this regard?

Is there some way the Minister can see to put in place more legislation to help put businesses in a position where they would be tracking their decarbonisation performance? An example would be the gender pay gap legislation, which targets larger businesses first, before encompassing smaller businesses over time. If something like that could be done, then we could point to the businesses performing really well. There could then be some way of awarding those doing very well.