Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail)
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While I think we all feel that to say that the outcome of COP26 in terms of global ambition could have been better is an understatement, I genuinely feel Ireland can be proud in terms of the commitment we went there with in terms of the Climate Action Bill, budgets being brought to us by the Climate Change Advisory Council, the climate action plan and sectoral targets. If other nations had the same commitment, the outcome of COP26 could have been a lot better.

Many of the items in the climate action plan regarding how we will reach that 51% target are quite long term and we may not see the benefits for quite a number of years. I am thinking of offshore wind and light rail in some of our cities that do not have it. None of those things is going to happen overnight. For people to really buy into the belief we can achieve these targets, we are going to have to start making gains on those really short-term elements - the low-hanging fruit. Things like the red tape and bureaucracy schools have to go through to put solar panels on their buildings are things we can change within a short period of time. Regarding the small-scale generator scheme for farmers, at the moment, farmers can get solar panels installed under the TAMS grant but because it is done under the TAMS grant, they cannot avail of the benefits of micro-generation. Regarding things like anaerobic digestion, we have models out there where anaerobic digestion is working but we are not putting the proper mechanisms in place to allow co-ops to be set up where anaerobic digesters can be rolled out. I was delighted to see the Connecting Ireland 25% increase in rural bus routes. In my own area of west Cork, with which the Minister is very familiar, some of the proposed bus routes will be game changing but we need to see a faster roll out of that. Regarding the low-hanging fruit, the short-term measures, where can we make those easy wins?