Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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My thanks to the Minister for the presentation. I want to comment on what we are doing today. Most people will look at this and ask what we are buying for €50 million. In the past, at least, the Minister would have agreed with me that these accountancy tricks - that is basically what they are - completely fail in the attempt to deal with our climate challenge and crisis. This is a failure and we should acknowledge that it is a failure. Since we have failed to reach our legally binding targets we are buying fantasy energy credits from Denmark and Estonia. This energy will not heat homes or help to produce power that will run factories or anything else. The energy is fantasy but the money - the €50 million - is absolutely real. That real €50 million could have paid student nurses or could have been involved in all manner of community projects. As was mentioned, it could have been used to help retrofit homes and solar power schools. We should spend some time thinking about why we failed.

I do not believe it is simply an oversight or a technical matter. Ministers may pat each other on the back for what they have done to reach renewable energy targets, but the case remains that we are still overwhelmingly reliant on fossil fuels in every category, including electricity, heating and transport. It is worth noting that our targets are percentages of the overall electricity and energy demand.

The Minister talks about the drive to industrialise and develop the ports and create all this new economic energy. Our demand for electricity will go up and, therefore, the overall percentage will go up that is allocated to fossil fuels. It could actually mean a larger volume of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions.

My main point is that the failure of the last Government, the previous Government of Fine Gael with the Labour Party, the Government of Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party and all the combinations of Governments is something that we need to be cautious about when we are being given commitments that new targets will be set and that they will not fail. We hear that the reason they have failed is because of planning difficulties and upsets in the markets. Although it has not been said explicitly, we hear that maybe even community opposition to some renewable projects is a cause.

I fear that the root cause is none of these. The reason for past and future failures is the reliance on private enterprise to deliver the targets we need in renewable energy. Deputy Bruton mentioned the climate action plan, as did the Minister. We worked and looked at this. One of the recommendations we made, although I have no doubt it has not been acted on, was that we would look at the possibility of a State-run, State-led renewable energy company that could be invested in to deliver the targets we need to reach instead of always relying on the investment decisions of private corporations and actors which are sometimes nudged and guided by State incentives. The failure rests ultimately on the policy that holds that we have to rely on the private sector.

This raises an interesting current question for us. If we continue to do this, if we continue to rely on a sector that may or may not invest or may or may not expand on this area, depending on how profitable it is, then how are we to handle the sector in a situation where we sign off on the CETA agreement? We did not do it today but I note the intent of the Government to do it in the next month or so. That would really copper-fasten the idea that the State cannot and will not see any prospect of taking ownership of the kind of decisions we may need to guarantee that we could reach our energy targets in future. It would really make it impossible for the State to set up publicly owned renewable energy companies if the private sector was already in place. The legal challenges would be so great. I would appreciate if the Minister would comment on that and on my overall contention. I believe we need an ESB-style determined State company, like we had in the past when we had few or no resources in the country. Such a body could really drive forward the switch to renewables, just as the ESB turned on the lights in every corner of the country in decades gone by.