Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

Deputy Dooley asked the Department whether we have reached a crisis point and asked us all what concrete things could be done to address the situation. Deputy Stanley specifically asked Friends of the Earth about electric vehicles.

As to what we should do about the crisis, my advice is that Ireland, its politicians and media should start to treat climate change the way we treat Brexit, namely, as an external threat that is only beginning and will unfold over decades, one which poses risks to all parts of society, requires immediate and sustained action from all sectors of the economy and needs co-ordination across all Departments as well as political leadership from the Taoiseach and all parties in the Dáil. We have seen such a response to Brexit but we have not seen a similar systematic response on climate.

As to what we do in terms of concrete recommendations, Friends of the Earth and Stop Planet Chaos have many recommendations, of which I will mention one or two. As I noted at the end of my opening statement, a significant deliberative process was undertaken by 99 citizens at the Citizens' Assembly under the chair of Ms Justice Laffoy. It was fascinating to listen to the discussions over four days. When citizens were given time, space and information and had experts only speaking to them, rather than organisations such as Friends of the Earth or the Irish Farmers' Association, IFA, they produced a highly progressive and radical set of recommendations across all sectors that challenge all of us. The first step we should take is give these recommendations due consideration. The recommendations have been published and the report of the Citizens' Assembly will be formally presented to the Oireachtas shortly. Members will then have to decide how to respond to the report. There is plenty to work with in it and it will offer a good departure point for a revision of the national mitigation plan.

To address some of the issues raised, the IFA has stolen most of my lines on community energy and solar. Friends of the Earth and the IFA are very much at one that while the Government's proposal on an official renewable electricity scheme is relatively good in terms of providing some supports for community ownership and community led developments and placing an obligation on developers to share equity in developer led projects, it is bad on solar power. The reason this is important is that solar is the area in which many people could become involved. This could become a societal project rather than one involving only highly organised commercial or community organisations. For example, I would like every green school to become a solar school. Currently, they cannot sell electricity back to the grid. This is not just about the megawatts involved, which would be limited in number, but hearts and minds and a sense of ownership of this project. Although the official renewable energy scheme, RES, did not feature solar power at micro or rooftop level, officials and the Minister have since stated they are committed to introducing a scheme for rooftop solar at the same pace as they introduced the official larger scheme for renewable electricity. I hope this scheme will be delivered this year in order that we can all begin to take part in it.

On the issue of transport, electric vehicles and recharging infrastructure are important. The market is moving at a faster pace than politicians and bureaucracy are ready for. In other countries, take-up of electric vehicles is speeding up and people are looking for this option. The issue must be resolved. However, Friends of the Earth's view, which is shared by Professor Fitzgerald, is that electric vehicles are only one part of the solution. The Citizens' Assembly, for example, recommended that we reverse the proportion of investment allocated to roads and public transport, respectively. This would mean spending two thirds of transport investment in public transport and one third in roads. Real gains can also be made in cycling and walking, two areas which also deliver co-benefits in terms of health and human connectivity.

We must clarify an issue on peat. If I understand the views expressed by Professor Fitzgerald and the Citizens' Assembly correctly, we should not only end subsidies for peat but also stop burning peat within perhaps five years. It is not acceptable, therefore, for the Department to state that once peat subsidies have been removed, the decision as to whether to burn peat will be a commercial one. The ESB and Bord na Móna, two semi-State companies, are agreeing to continue to burn peat until 2030, which is just not good enough. Moreover, it is not good enough to cross-subsidise peat burning through subsidies for the co-firing of biomass. Until recently, the biomass used here was palm kernels from palm oils, the production of which is devastating habitats and livelihoods in the global south.

We must start the firing gun on withdrawing from peat burning. In this regard, I will make a quick analogy. When a US multinational company pulls out of Ireland, the Minister brings the relevant agencies, including IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland, together overnight, appoints a task force and promises to use the factory to be vacated and seek as many supports as possible to assist the affected workers and communities to come out the other side. It is easier, if not easy, when someone else starts the firing gun and the decision is taken by faceless people in a boardroom in Silicon Valley. In this case, however, we must start the firing gun and eliminate peat production in five years. This will mean establishing a transition task force and using current expenditure on peat from the public service obligation levy to help communities to determine what their community will be like in ten years, help workers retrain and so on. We cannot allow the ESB and Bord na Móna to decide they will not stop burning peat until 2030 because at that stage, we will have bust all the carbon budgets for agriculture and everything else and given them all to the peat sector. That makes no sense for anybody.