Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment is, at its core, about delivering efficiency. The Department exists to address the connected challenges of our country, the rural parts of our country in particular, which are being significantly left behind where they need to be in terms of modern telecommunications infrastructure. We are also, as a country, playing catch-up on our obligations in regard to climate change. The national development plan gives us a means to deliver on these objectives in a much more comprehensive and fundamental way. We will continue to use our natural resources in a sustainable manner to drive change, to transform rural Ireland, to support employment and to protect our people and our planet for future generations. The national development plan is the first plan in a decade and represents a step-change in our efforts to meet our climate objectives.

Some have criticised the plan as not being ambitious enough but, far too often in the past, there have been bold visions that were accompanied by a lack of finance and a lack of authority to implement them. This is a practical plan with the funding commitment to deliver upon it. The national development plan commits to expenditure of almost €22 billion for climate action - that is, €1 in every €5 that is being spent over the next decade will be climate-related. Some €14 billion of this will be investments by our semi-State companies. With this plan, we are moving from being climate laggards to climate leaders in Europe.

The commitments we have set out in the national development plan to further our transition to a low carbon, climate resilient society will also be central to delivery of the national planning framework, which will influence where we live, where we work and how we travel. The national development plan envisages a radical step-change, with €4 billion on upgrading energy efficiency of our residential commercial and public buildings, including all of our schools built prior to 2008, and €1 billion on rolling out the most energy efficient and climate friendly heating technologies in our buildings. We will have at least 500,000 electric vehicles on our roads by 2030 and we will roll out the charging infrastructure to make this a reality. We are going to ban non-zero emissions vehicles being sold in Ireland from 2030 and no NCT certificate will be issued for non-zero emissions vehicles from 2045. We are now explicitly committing to ending the production of electricity from coal at Moneypoint by 2025, becoming one of the first countries in Europe to do so. We are the first country in Europe to introduce a nationwide ban on the sale of smoky coal. These decisive actions are ensuring that our children and their children have access to clean air.

Our semi-State companies will collectively spend almost €14 billion over the next decade under the national development plan on renewable electricity investments, smarter meter deployment, grid upgrades and interconnection to cater for the growing demand and to diversify our sources of energy supply. Solar panels on our homes and community-led electricity and energy products offer a real opportunity for local economic growth. Project Ireland 2040 is putting our climate ambition into practical action. The most innovative aspect of the plan will be the establishment of a climate action fund of €500 million to leverage further investment from the private sector to finance our transition to a low carbon economy. There is also another €500 million in a disruptive technologies fund. This provides us with the tools to support innovative solutions to our climate and future economic challenges.

We are also putting in place a fund of €1 billion to support provincial towns and rural communities. This allows people with good ideas at long last to turn them into practical solutions. As Deputy Eugene Murphy will know, there are 18,000 ha of cutaway bog north of Lanesborough in the Mount Dillon complex. We intend to reflood that cutaway bog, with the climate benefits this will provide. It will create one of Europe's biggest wetland parks, with cycleways, walkways and even its own railway. This fund is very much a "get up and go" fund. It will support communities like Elphin, where people have come together and come forward with an innovative plan, and also Rooskey, Castlerea and Boyle, where communities have come together and decided how they are going to build on the strengths they have in their own towns, and which can now access a fund to do that. We have been very innovative in doing this in Roscommon and we have shown we can provide that leadership. There is now an opportunity for other counties and communities across the country to follow our lead and example.

Early implementation will be essential in order that we capture the full climate benefits of these measures and do not store up problems with achieving our targets over the next decade. The radical step-change represented by the national development plan will need to be matched by efforts in all sectors of our economy. These expenditure commitments will need to be complemented by taxation measures, regulation and behavioural change. These are the other three legs of the climate action chair. The challenge ahead of us on climate is clear. It is the work of us, as politicians, to bridge the gulf between the global challenge and our national responsibilities, between Ireland's obligations and every single person's responsibility.

What we are missing in our towns and villages across Roscommon, Galway and the other counties of this country is young people. We see clubs struggling to field teams. Young people are back at Christmas and Easter and during the summer holidays but every single community deserves to be able to keep local people in their own community. I had a conversation with Canon Liam Devine, who is in Loughglinn after leaving the town of Athlone. He told a story about last Christmas and the Éire Óg team in west Roscommon. On St. Stephen's Day the local team played the emigrants. Canon Devine, who has a big interest in football, said to them, "We have a great team this year", until someone turned around and told him, "They will all be gone next week", because it was the emigrants who had won that game. It is a sad reflection of what is going on right across rural Ireland.

The national development plan and the planning framework are about turning that around. One of the key planks in the context of doing that is the delivery of the national broadband plan in every single community, parish and village in Ireland. That alone will deliver the type of efficiency about which we are talking. It will also encourage young people to return to live in those communities and set up businesses there. I understand the frustration and anger over the delays in the process. We have received promise after promise from both telecoms companies and my predecessors but I am determined to deliver. I want to harness the anger to which I refer in order to secure high-capacity broadband and a network that will meet the needs of our generation, of our children and of their children. We need to put in place a network that will cater for our future needs. I am committed to moving ahead with the procurement process that is in place. My Department is working to a timeline for selecting the preferred bidder by this September. We might be able to achieve that sooner in light of the single-bidder scenario. I am also committed to ensuring the deployment of high speed broadband to almost 540,000 premises across the national broadband plan State intervention area and to have this completed within a three-year timeframe.

We face a huge challenge but this plan is a new beginning. People will find weaknesses in it and it is the Opposition's job to identify those weaknesses. We have a plan, let us start implementing it. We should, by all means, identify weaknesses in it. Let us ensure that it is reviewed regularly and adapted to meet our needs. What we must do - this is the purpose of the plan - is create an economy for our people. It is not about raising children to serve an economy when they become adults. For far too long, we have listened to the economists; it is time we started listening to our people at every crossroads the length and breadth of the country. We must listen to their needs and then adapt our economy in order to meet them.

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