Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I regret that I was not in the House when the Minister opened the debate. There was a Whips' meeting and I have not yet mastered bi-location. I would like to be energetically and enthusiastically supporting this legislation. Unfortunately, I cannot because it is woefully inadequate.

Over the past ten years, we have seen eight different pieces of legislation on this topic. I introduced legislation in 2012, which was debated in this House. Legislation has been introduced by Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, the Green Party, the Labour Party and Fine Gael. This pretty much spans the entire political spectrum. It has taken ten years of Bills, reports, hearings, consultations, drafts and pre-legislative scrutiny to get to where we are now. At all times, the overwhelming evidence presented was that whatever law emerged, it needed to be strong to change behaviour and bring the people with us.

It is not all bad news. We need to have balance. A couple of weeks ago, when we had the debate on the committee report, it was said that we were almost leading the way in Europe. However, the UK, Scotland, France, Denmark, Sweden and Finland have one thing in common. They have adopted legislation which is much stronger than that with which we are presented. They also have targets set in domestic law. Unfortunately and critically, this legislation does not contain these targets. For legislation which has the support of politicians across the spectrum, it is amazing that narrow sectoral concerns seem to have had more impact in the framing of this legislation. I hope this can be changed on Committee Stage. It is an indictment of Parliament that, over the past ten years, we have failed to respond to one of the biggest challenges of our times. As has been stated already, it is not just for the benefit of this generation. This is most definitely for the benefit of future generations. The planet will survive, but we need to address the issue of the number of people on the planet and the conditions in which they will survive.

The Oireachtas environment committee, of which I am a member, took a pragmatic view when compiling our report. The debate was very good and the people who were invited to contribute to the process represented all viewpoints. The report was very measured. I would have liked it to go further. However, many of us were happy to go with the middle ground because we felt there was a decent chance some of the suggestions and recommendations would make it into law. Unfortunately, some of the more serious ones have not. For example, we dropped outright targets in favour of a definition of the kind of low-carbon economy we wanted. We framed this as one with near-zero emissions in transport, energy and buildings and carbon neutrality in agriculture. Amazingly, this compromise did not make it into the legislation before the House. This is hugely disappointing.

On the independence of the expert advisory council, the Minister of State, Deputy Kevin Humphreys, constantly spoke of the need for a model similar to that of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. We thought this was a very good idea. The Minister of State was constantly harping on about it, but this is not evident in the framing of the independence, or the possible lack of any independence, of the expert advisory council. It is vitally important that the body which monitors our efforts under this Bill will have the power to hold the Government to account.

If Departments do not fear consequences, I do not think it will be central to the framing of legislation and policy options into the future. It is critically important that independence is elevated when it comes to the Committee Stage debate on this legislation. I hope the Minister will take that on board.

The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that even if the most extreme mitigating measures were adopted today, we would still fail to achieve our current 2020 emissions reduction targets. The 2030 EU framework target, around which this Bill is based, seeks a reduction on the 1990 emissions of 40%, or twice the 2020 target. Given that we will not have the sectoral plans included in this until 2017, we will not know what the outcome of those plans will be until 2022 or 2023. If we are off target, we will have just seven years to get back on target. It is going to become an impossibility for people a short time into the future. That is a major problem.

I have received replies to parliamentary questions, for example from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, in relation to the sectoral plans. To be perfectly honest, it does not look like the kind of investment that is going into transport is even being considered in advance of the sectoral plans being put in place. In the case of the built environment, there is a real opportunity to provide for retrofitting, perhaps through the European Investment Fund. Rather than having a carbon fund here, we have another means of collecting taxes. If we are to bring people along and change their attitudes, there must be a relationship between the carbon fund and what people see for that fund. It has to be seen as an opportunity, rather than as something to be imposed on top of people.

Of course the agriculture sector is probably our most challenging sector. While there is no doubt that we produce very good food, certain things that could be done at this stage, rather than waiting until the sectoral plan is produced, would be mitigating. I think that is going to be one of the biggest failures of this approach. It is a question of how it is done. As has been said, our national ambition is stated through the sectoral plans. There is a lack of national ambition by virtue of the fact that we are going to wait until 2022 or 2023 before we even see where the difficulties are going to arise. We need to get to 40% by 2030, but we are not even going to get to 20%. It can already be predicted that this will be an impossible task into the future. Just as many of us look back and ask why more people did not shout "stop" in advance of the economic crash, when the bubble caused by the building boom could have been predicted, it can be predicted that if we do not take certain decisions now, people will look back and ask why we did not do so. They will ask why we did not put the nuts and bolts in place to deliver on a solution in a timely way, especially when we had signed up to a clear obligation to do so.

This legislation misses the target by a very significant distance. For example, it does not have independence in terms of the expert advisory council. The sectoral plans are pushed out into the future. We had recommended that a timeframe of no more than 12 months should be provided for, but this Bill provides for a 24-month timeframe. The lack of a definition is a huge difficulty. We will have a serious problem in doing something about something that does not have a definition or an adequate definition.

I hope the Minister will be able to accept a significant number of amendments on Committee Stage. We had a very good pre-legislative stage. If that is going to mean something, we have to see it coming through in the Bill itself. As I have said, the position that was reached was very much in the middle ground, rather than the extreme end where an attempt would have been made to create a dialectic between the Department and the committee. An effort was made to try to be responsible about what could be delivered. The real disappointment is that the middle ground position that was arrived at has not been taken on board. I look forward to hearing the Minister's comments at the end of this debate. I hope he will give us some sort of indication of what is likely to be taken on Committee Stage.

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