Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the budget for 2018. I will confine my remarks to the issues of communications, climate action and the environment, the brief for which I am the Sinn Féin Front Bench spokesperson. My party, in its alternative budget, was the only party to produce costed measures to tackle climate change, secure improvements in energy and create jobs in this sector. The budget is a non-event in terms of climate change as it did not include measures to effectively address the issue. It does not give me pleasure to make this statement. However, I have raised this with the Minister and his predecessors as far back as Mr. Phil Hogan.

Ministers have experts and officials to advise them and give direction on the way forward. The final product in the budget was meagre, however. As I stated five or six years ago, Ireland will hit a carbon cliff because we will not meet our European Union targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. The Minister confirmed last week when I raised this matter in committee that in 2020 Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions would be between 4% and 6% lower than their 2005 level. The European Commission has stipulated that Ireland must achieve a 20% reduction in emissions by 2020, which means our actions will only deliver 25% of the target. Climate change is a major issue and missing our targets will affect everybody, whether one is on the right or left or in the centre or whether one is living in Dublin, Connemara, Cork or Belfast. Direct measures must be taken.

As I spelled out previously, when climate action legislation was before the House Sinn Féin pressed hard for the inclusion of binding sectoral targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We proposed setting targets for each sector of the economy and public administration. At the time, I highlighted the need to ensure greater involvement of local authorities in this area. The House can only enact legislation. We must involve citizens, communities and local authorities in this process.

We must turn the ship around. We had an industrial revolution in the 1800s and we need another revolution in electricity generation and greenhouse gas emissions. We also need to start creating jobs in this area. As good global citizens, we should not be simply bound by the EU but should aim to exceed the target of achieving a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. The consequence of achieving a 4% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions or only 25% of our target will be fines of hundreds of millions of euro. Instead of paying fines, why are we not investing hundreds of millions in hospitals, housing and education or, more important, spending this money on alternative sources of energy to achieve future savings?

We have to diversify into other energy sources. Having met a number of the big players in the energy industry, including the ESB, and having raised this issue with the Minister and his officials, it is clear that those who control the levers do not yet understand that the future does not lie in having three or four large energy generation facilities but in thousands of smaller generation units, as is the case in Germany.

Renewable energy generation has the potential to create jobs in rural areas. We are decades behind other countries in this area. Some 11,000 people in County Laois, including me, commute to work outside the county every morning. As a Member of the Dáil who has been sent here by the people of County Laois and south County Kildare, I accept that I must either travel to Dublin every day or stay in the capital overnight. However, many of those commuting outside County Laois should not be doing so. With a population of 84,000 and a working population of less than half that, it seems one in three or one in four workers in County Laois travels up the motorway to work every day, which is crazy. We need to create jobs in County Laois through alternative energy projects and, in so doing, generate wealth that can be recirculated in the local economy. Instead, this Government and its predecessor supported the development of a small number of gigantic wind farms owned by multinational companies and opposed by local people. These have not created local jobs and there has been no local involvement or dividend to the local community from them.

There are only 1,800 electric vehicles on the road, a tiny number compared with other countries. Up to one quarter of vehicles in other countries are electric. The ESB is installing home charging units for 2,000 customers. However, the electricity network will not be able to deal with widespread home charging unless changes are made to the grid because it will not be able to handle 20 residents of one street charging their cars every night.

The Government promised to promote electric vehicles but did not provide additional grants in the budget. Instead, a tax measure was introduced whereby an employee who has an electric vehicle purchased on his or her behalf by an employer will be allowed to write off the benefit-in-kind element of the purchase. Having investigated this issue in the past couple of days, I have not yet encountered anyone who travels to and from work in an electric vehicle provided by an employer. Sinn Féin proposed to more than double the funding available for the electric vehicle grant to ensure take-up improves. Last year's allocation for this grant was €3.3 million. We proposed to increase this figure by almost €5 million. Only €9.1 million in grant funding has been drawn down since the scheme started.

There is also confusion regarding public charging points. This area is a mess and there is no plan to get out of it. The Commission for Energy Regulation issued a paper on public charging last week in which it stated there would "be no further funding of the assets through network charges" and it expected the ESB to arrange the sale of these assets. This is a reference to charging points which were installed and funded by the ESB and for which the company does not receive funding. The ESB informs me, as I am sure it has informed the Government and other parties, that it does not intend to continue to fund charging points. Moreover, the regulator has stated the company must sell off these assets. We need a plan to address this issue as otherwise we will not have public spaces for charging electric cars. Who will buy, finance and maintain charging points and who will build new points in future? Without public charging facilities, there will be no increase in the 1,946 electric vehicles on the roads.

Home charging of electric vehicles will work best alongside micro-generation. However, micro-generation must be co-ordinated and driven by the State if people are to take it up.

Be it through small-scale wind power, solar photovoltaic systems or something else, microgeneration gives households, farms, small businesses and public buildings the ability to produce their own power. Many new schools have been built, for which I have given the Government credit in the Chamber and locally in my constituency. That is one of the good measures that the Government has implemented. However, the fine, big roofs on those schools are not catching all of that solar energy. Many of them have south-facing roofs. These should be catching solar power to heat the schools and generate electricity.

The deferred changes to household waste collection announced this year means that the Government has given these private companies free rein. Despite promises of a waiver scheme for low-income households, it has failed to materialise. There was talk of €70 in support of people with medical incontinence, of whom approximately 90,000 are registered with the HSE according to our figures. In our budget, we proposed that these households be given an increased amount of €100 and that a modest waiver of €100 per week be made available to the next 100,000 lowest income households. This would be a phased waiver scheme. It cannot be done in one go because the cake is only so big and the money has to come from somewhere, but it is a costed measure. I appeal to the Government. The previous Government promised to do this but never did. Its members may have argued that times were harder and they were trying to deal with the financial emergency. That is fair enough, but we are now in a better place and I ask that the Government examine this matter again.

On Tuesday, the Minister mentioned the scourge of illegal dumping and the need to reduce and reuse. We agree. Sinn Féin has published a Bill, which I introduced in the Dáil in July, that would increase the fines for illegal dumping and, what is important, create a deposit return scheme. Our Bill was comprehensive, unlike the one-line or two-line Bill that has progressed to Second Stage in the Dáil. Our Bill would reduce waste volumes, which is the important aspect. We must tackle this problem at source. Besides increasing penalties, it places an obligation on landlords and tenants to ensure that households have a way of disposing of their waste.

We have the third highest electricity prices in Europe. These need to be reduced and we must examine the issue. With all of the hype around the budget, what did not get noticed much was the fact that a significant electricity and gas hike was announced over the weekend. One company will hike prices by in excess of 5% at a time when inflation is running at approximately 1%, so that is five times the inflation rate.

We need targeted measures, in particular to protect the 400,000 people living in households that suffer from energy poverty. We have set out specific measures to reduce energy bills for householders through, for example, the warmer homes scheme and replacing single-glazed windows. There are not many single-glazed windows left in the State, given that most houses, thankfully, have double glazing now. That is progress. Great work was done through the warmer homes scheme and the better energy homes scheme, and each of us has seen their benefit. However, there is a cohort of houses that still have single glazing, so we must move to address this issue. We included an extra €12.85 million in our budget to that end, but also to assist with microgeneration.

In short, we want to reduce our emissions, reduce the cost to households and create jobs, particularly in the regions. Here is an opportunity for rural Ireland. There has been much talk. Deputies talk the talk about rural Ireland, but renewable energy presents an opportunity to create real jobs, be they in County Kildare, Wexford, Laois, Galway or wherever.

I will move on to a different subject. I raised the issue of women's pensions in the Dáil last week. It was not the first time that our party had raised it. Last December, a motion that we tabled on this matter was, unfortunately, voted down by the two larger parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. It would have given women equality in their pension rights. The changes to the PRSI criteria made by the then Minister, Deputy Burton, in 2012 have penalised women. We need to change that, and Sinn Féin has provided for this change in our budget. We are not saying that we could change it on 1 January.

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