Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Labour Party is supporting the Bill. We wish to see it proceed to Committee Stage. It is great to stand in the Chamber and hear the voice of a young child in the Public Gallery. It is a nice reminder of just exactly why we are all here. It is lovely to hear that little voice from on high.

I will offer a different slant on this Bill. In Paris in December 2015, Ireland agreed to halt climate change. We signed up to very specific targets, namely, to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit that temperature increase to 1.5° Celsius. The time has come for us to be very serious about that target from a global perspective, particularly in regard to what we do on the island of Ireland.

If one considers the development agenda, I note that on average, we spend approximately €600 million per annum supporting poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, in working with our key partner countries through Irish Aid. Through Irish Aid, we support subsistence farming projects in the Tigray region of Ethiopia to allow a sustainable model of agriculture to exist there in order that people can feed themselves, at the very minimum. We have to make the connection between the programmes that we are supporting in sub-Saharan Africa and the effect of a global average temperature increase of 2° Celsius above the pre-industrial levels on the very people we are assisting. We in western Europe are contributing by our actions to that very same increase in temperatures.

There must be an understanding of the causal link between what we are supporting in our laudable programmes in Irish Aid on the one hand and our behaviour on this island.

I wish to refer to the excellent Stop Climate Change briefing document that was submitted to Members. It refers to the role of financial analysts and says that financial analysts have highlighted the risks of fossil fuel assets becoming stranded or worthless, a warning reiterated publicly by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. It continues: "An increasing number of legal scholars and regulators are now warning that fiduciaries who fail to consider climate change risks in their investment analyses and decisions could be liable for breaching their fiduciary duty in the future, exposing them to litigation risk". If we are capturing the zeitgeist, there must be ownership of the agenda from a political point of view to ensure that we divest ourselves from those types of investment instruments and that we as a Parliament, on behalf of the people, take radical action on climate change. In this country we are now subject to greater weather events which have an impact on the delivery of food, how agriculture operates and on the built environment in the towns, villages and enclaves in which we live. We must start to take radical action to ensure we have both an investment portfolio and a set of policy instruments that take seriously the risks inherent in climate change.

In conclusion, we will support the Bill. It is time for us to get to grips with this issue from a non-partisan point of view and this is an opportunity to do that. I hope the Government will facilitate the Bill passing to Committee Stage. It appears there is a clear majority in the House for the view that it should proceed to that Stage. When that happens we will have an opportunity to put forward amendments as we see fit, contribute to the debate and have a successful outcome on the Bill, such that it leads to a set of policy instruments that ultimately give effect to real change.

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