Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Section 19(2)(f) refers to “outlining how the pursuit and achievement of the national climate objective is to be integrated into plan-led development”. I want to be specific about Ireland's climate targets as per the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2021. Stronger wording would be more specific.

On amendment No. 366, the Minister said this is complex, is at an early stage and is not directly related to plan-making. Amendment No. 366 is about the obligation to prepare the housing development strategy, so it is an important part of the plan-making process. This should be an objective. In fact, why would the addressing of whole-life carbon emissions not be an objective at the plan stage? The Minister of State said this complex. In one sense, it is not terribly complex. As a country, we declared a climate emergency in 2019. We are behind in terms of getting our carbon emissions down and 11% of carbon emissions are coming from the building process and the building industry. There are technologies out there that could be used today if there was an obligation to use them and they would significantly reduce that percentage. For example, we have mentioned low-carbon concrete rather than high-carbon concrete, timber and the work that has been done by Construct Innovate around the viable homes projects and designs that are less carbon-intensive.

To some degree, this is not terribly complex. Many of the solutions are known and are being implemented in countries like France and Denmark, which are streets ahead of us on this. We are dealing with this fast enough. If we do not put it into legislation, we will fall even further behind. We need it in our legislation now. This is meant to be the legislation that will guide us for the next 25 years. There needs to be urgency on this. We can describe anything as complex, but something being complex is not a reason to not do it. Much of what needs to be done here is not terribly complex. We need measurement of carbon in the construction process. We need to look at carbon in the context of the whole life of a building. The point was again made by people in the industry at the Irish Green Building Council event that some of the building process around A-rated homes means they will never get their carbon footprint back if measured across their whole life. The view of World Habitat is that, if you are not using the right low-carbon materials to build your home, it can take 50 years to balance out the energy use of demolishing a current home and building a new one. These things need to be addressed now.

I will speak to some of the other amendments. Amendment No. 230 relates to the regional, spatial and economic strategies. The purpose behind it is to have these align with Ireland's climate targets.

Amendment No. 305 is about obligations to make and review a development plan and states that planning authorities should take due account of Ireland's climate targets.

Amendment No. 342 relates to the strategy for sustainable development and regeneration. It is about mitigating significant adverse effects on the environment, including climate. The current wording is just on the environment, which is very broad. It needs contain the words "including climate", because the reference to the environment is far too broad. It is also to ensure that planning authorities take into account the environmental impact on the climate. Some of the wording in the amendment is designed to update the broad wording around environment. It is what you would expect from the 2000 Act. There has been so much progress since then with recognition that the environment is broadly important, but we must also have specific regard to impacts on climate. That should be in our legislation.