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

For the environmental movement, this is an historic day and an historic Bill because what we are doing is not insignificant. This legislation makes a significant statement, so significant that Deputy Mick Wallace's phone is celebrating. It is significant for local communities, particularly in counties Leitrim, Roscommon, Sligo and Clare, but also because it makes a wider statement about our future without fossil fuels. It is a statement of confidence and intent that we can live on alternative resources, namely, our own natural resources, which will not emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or pollute our water and the air we breathe.

I, too, commend Deputy Tony McLaughlin and the Minister of State, Deputy Seán Kyne, on their work in presenting the Bill. I understand this is the first of the Private Bills, of which a large number have been published in the past year, to reach Report Stage. The question asked in the Business Committee and other committees is why these Bills are not proceeding to Committee and Report Stage. The Bill is also significant in that we debating Report Stage tonight.

I commend the community groups that have led the campaign on hydraulic fracturing in a positive and constructive manner. I refer to the Love Leitrim group, whose members I have seen on top of mountains at bonfires and outside the gate of Leinster House dressed as cows and Lord knows what else. They have been positive and confident and have run a brilliant campaign. I commend the Good Energies Alliance Ireland whose members I have had the pleasure of meeting a number of times in Leitrim. It has held seminars and has engaged in in-depth thinking, with other campaigners, on the technological alternatives to hydraulic fracturing and the environmental risks of the process. This is a great day for the members of these organisations.

I commend Friends of the Earth on the support it has provided in drafting the Bill, including international expertise. Kate Ruddock and others in the Gallery have done a great job consistently working with Deputies to ensure the Bill gets over the line. There are too many other community groups to mention, including Fracking Free Ireland and the people I met as I went from one farm to the next on the Loop Head Peninsula who said they did not want fracking in their community. This is a great day for them.

More than anything else, however, this is a great day because we face an existential threat from the release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. We must address this existential crisis and the great thing is that we can play a part in doing so. It is the villages in Leitrim that are at the front line. Every village and community has a chance to play its part.

This Chamber has been divided on water for a long time. On this issue of water quality, particularly with regard to the source of the River Shannon and many other of the rivers that flow through Ireland, we have said we will not take a risk. Several committees heard scientific evidence that fracking into this source of shale carried risks as the natural geological fractures in the rock would result in some of the pollutants used to collect gases seeping into our water resources. The Bill is significant for that reason.

I fully agree with the sentiment expressed in Deputy Boyd Barrett's amendment that we must stop fracking in all locations. Our seas cover ten times the area of our land. However, on this occasion, I agree with Sinn Féin that, while agreeing with the amendment in spirit, it would be better to pass the Bill today and achieve certainty that all hydraulic fracturing on land will categorically end. The issue in respect of the seas is more complicated, as we saw when debating Committee Stage of the Minerals Development Bill. For example, some people are considering using gasification to extract energy from a cold seam in the Irish Sea. A range of technical and legislative issues arise in respect of offshore exploration. It is better, therefore, to pass the Bill and have cast iron certainty that onshore fracking will end.

I ask Sinn Féin and People Before Profit to go one step further and recognise that if we are to take climate change seriously, listen to scientists and heed what has to be done, we must leave four fifths of known fossil fuel reserves under ground. This, in turn, means we must put an end to all offshore gas and oil exploration in our waters, including fracking. This will not be easy because many parties and individuals have held up the prospect that the Atlantic will generate a great fortune for the country. I remember hearing figures of €60 billion or €600 billion - I cannot remember which - that could be generated and which would be our rescue. I am sorry but these reserves are no longer touchable if we are to take climate change seriously.

I fully agree with the amendment to stop exploration offshore. Let us go further by stopping the issuing and use of licences for any exploration for offshore gas and oil. We have an obligation to do so. The Green Party will introduce legislation on this issue and will seek support from Sinn Féin and People for Profit because that is the scale of the response we need to make.

The Bill is also historic because it has secured cross-party support. I regret my colleague, Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice, is not present. I listened to a row the other night about climate change. We often hear arguments citing wind farms and the grid as problems and accusing the Green Party of causing all sorts of trouble with the new technologies we want introduced. We recognise that we have a problem in that regard. If we stop using fossil fuels, as we must, we will have to provide an alternative. That alternative is renewable energy, including solar and wind power. We need to get this right, however, by remaining united and bringing all communities with us. The same communities in Roscommon who were concerned about fracking are also concerned about onshore wind.

Many of the issues that will arise in the coming years will not be as difficult to deal with as those that have arisen in recent years. For example, wind power generation will start to move offshore. We must also start developing solar power, even in the cloudy north west. We need to get this right, however, and the people who have been campaigning, including the Good Energies Alliance and Love Leitrim, have a job ahead of them. Having achieved a great victory in saying "No" to fracking, we need to work out how we can become good at providing an alternative energy supply. Electric vehicles are the future and communities and counties that are good at being efficient will prosper. More than anything else, the energy resource must be local and belong to everyone. Let us open up that future as we close the door on the history of fossil fuels.

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