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

I commend Deputy Bríd Smith and her colleagues in Solidarity-People Before Profit on putting forward the Bill, which is similar to a Bill introduced by the Green Party. However, we are very glad for her to bring it to the House and it is to be hoped that it will be passed and enacted into legislation.

I commend Stop Planet Chaos and also the NGO movement in Ireland, which has had a hugely positive role in recent years in working with this Parliament on this and other legislation we have advanced. Ireland can be good at this. It can be a good, green land. We can be a proud people in the transition that has to be made. We can be ahead of the curve. We will be good at this and we should move forward and grasp the opportunity at hand. In supporting the Bill, I commend, without wishing to pick out individuals, Bill McKibben of 350.orgon his work five or six years ago in doing the simple maths and atmospheric physics which showed that we need to keep 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. That is the rational and scientific viewpoint. Ministers often say that we have to be serious, think about this issue and resolve it. The reasoned, intelligent and thought-out science is in favour of the Bill. The Government is taking an irrational, reckless, dangerous, thoughtless and careless approach by going the other way. When Deputy Bríd Smith and I attended the COP23 talks in Bonn last year we encountered further analysis by priceofoil.orgwhich showed that the latest research indicates we cannot use known reserves or existing coal, gas and oil production sites if we are to meet the climate commitments in the Paris Agreement. That is the physical, scientific and energy reality we face.

Climate change is not the only reason to change our ways. Startling new evidence published in Naturemagazine last June indicated that the seismic activity that is being engaged in is destroying our natural habitat and having a real effect on the zooplankton that form the base of the food chain, as Deputy Clare Daly stated. The world has lost half its wildlife in the past 40 years. We cannot ignore the biodiversity crisis that the Bill will help to address. In recent days, the Irish Wildlife Trust - fair play to it - published another important study showing that 48 species in the Irish marine environment are currently threatened with extinction. We must act.

The great joy, opportunity or reality is that advancing in this direction will be good for our economy. We will be good at this. It is a pity that Deputy Stanley is no longer in the Chamber. I listened to his contribution and thought he had gone back to the old days when the maxim was to burn everything English except their coal. I also thought he was advocating for economic nationalism, whereby we have to hold on to what we have. The world has changed in that regard. We have to leave that oil in the ground. Doing so will allows us to switch to the alternative, renewable, cleaner and indigenous energy supplies we have. That is where the world is going. Some 90% of new electricity generation in Europe is in that renewable space. Some say it is only a marginal contribution but, rather, the entire margin of investment in electricity generation is in this renewable space and we can be good at it.

Ireland is a windy country. The first turbines were installed here in 1992 at Bellacorick in Mayo and are still in operation. We were one of the first to use offshore wind turbines when they were put in place on the Arklow Bank. They have worked perfectly every day since but they are the only ones we have installed. We must make a big investment in floating wind turbines and wind turbines in the Irish Sea and that is from where our energy supply will come. That is a certainty.

If there were no climate, environmental or wildlife implications, I would still say that oil extraction is a poor business bet. One must go into one of the harshest environments on earth, 200 or 300 miles out into the Atlantic, to extract oil. In Irish waters, a viable oil source is found once in every 40 or 50 exploratory investigations. We will defeat oil by making it too cheap, not by it being too expensive. There will never be an economic case for extracting oil from the Atlantic. Oil will never again go over $150 dollars per barrel because people will switch to electric vehicles and transport and that will keep its price down. At less than $100 per barrel, the extraction of oil from Irish waters will never make sense. Gas in Irish waters will never come ashore because it is so distant but, rather, will be shipped off to some other location. For those who argue that we have to think of energy security, there is no security in oil and gas. It is available on the international market. We will use oil for the next ten, 20 or 30 years at most but it is available on the international market and we do not lose any security by not having our own. It comes into Whitehaven in Cork and does not have an Irish, British or American stamp on it. There is only one oil market and there is no security risk in that regard.

The security risk is missing out on the economic opportunity for switching the other way by leading the curve in the transition that is now inevitable because California, China and Germany are doing it and we can too. We can be one of the best places in the world to do it and we should go for it. The 1 million Irish homes that have oil-fired central heating should, over the next ten years, have heat pumps installed, along with solar panels on their roofs and electric charging points in their driveways. If that is done, hey presto, we will start to have houses that are very efficient, smart, comfortable and well-run.

We do not need oil or gas. We must stop and make the switch. We have lost our green reputation and reputation is important. It is, therefore, important that the Bill is passed such that the world starts to recognise Ireland is doing the same thing as France. It has made a similar decision to that proposed in the Bill in respect of its waters. We can do likewise and that will helps us because we will be able to stand a little prouder in the world and tell the truth that we can and should be good at this.

More than anything else, we need to get the politics right. The Bill cannot be one of the 24 or 25 that will be stuck at Committee Stage for the next eight months, two years or whatever time. The Government needs to realise that the world is changing and that it cannot stop that by blocking legislation from passing not just Committee Stage but through the Dáil, across the corridor into the Seanad and out into reality. There is nothing to stop the Bill proceeding. I look forward to it. We could have a committee meeting or pre-legislative scrutiny next week. We should bring in Bill McKibben and Mary Robinson to see what they think. We should ask Lorna Gold to get Pope Francis to Skype the meeting. That is the important point: it raises our hearts, spirits and souls that we will be good at this. I am sure of that.

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