Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The scale of the change we need to make is phenomenal. It was clear from the presentation given to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment yesterday that we are nowhere near doing what we need to do. We will not meet any of our renewables targets. We will be one of only two countries in Europe to fail to meet emissions reduction targets; we are heading in the other direction. There was an acknowledgement at yesterday's committee meeting that we are not even doing the additional measures that would slightly reduce that gap. I asked the officials at the meeting to outline the scale of those additional measures. It would be something like 50,000 additional electric vehicles in the next few years at a time when the existing owners of electric vehicles will say they cannot find a working plug-in station.

When it comes to flood prevention, the scale of change we need to make involves taking hundreds of thousands of acres of Coillte forest land and turning it into a flood protection zone and a carbon sink rather than a lumber forest development, which is viable, or changing completely not just all these big and very expensive engineering measures we are considering along the Shannon and other rivers, but actually considering soft land use measures such as using our bogs in a completely different way, which would also have the advantage of carbon storage.

To win over the people for the scale of the change I believe is necessary if we are serious about implementing the Paris agreement, we cannot use the old consultation way of coming with top-down solutions. We need to flip it and ask people for help and try to engender the understanding that I hold to be central and true that it is a better economic model when we work with nature. When we go in this low carbon direction, it is the best possible future for our country.

I mentioned the media's involvement because it was referred to in the Government's documents as the nature of this new engagement and consultation process. I cite the example of the commemoration of the centenary of the foundation of the State in 1916 where media partners played a part, not just as being involved as reporters, but also in helping events happen and bringing new online techniques to allow people to engage. As we said last night, this has to be a very big creative process.

It also needs to involve the Departments of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Agriculture, Food and the Marine and others as well as the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment. I agree that one might think that the Cabinet sub-committee is an obvious place. However, I suggest that it might be a sub-committee to that committee. If the process is important in how people are engaged, it has to start with some sort of steering group that also brings in some outside people who would not typically be at a Cabinet sub-committee. By all means it can report to that Cabinet sub-committee, but it should be set up as a separate entity to do that. It should be given adequate budget and real freedom to be innovative and creative to win our people over to the sense that we will have a better future with lower carbon.

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