Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Taoiseach has heard about Greta Thunberg. She is the now 16 year old Swedish school student who started a worldwide movement of school student strikes and protests demanding action on climate change. At the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, conference in Poland, she stated:

For 25 years, countless people have come to the UN climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions and clearly that has not worked as emissions continue to rise. So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future. I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.

That urgency for action, that recognition that we cannot rely on convincing those in power to do what is necessary is absolutely correct. It is perhaps the reason the European Parliament groups to which Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil belong have blocked her from speaking to that assembly this week. The latest IPCC report warns that we have 12 years to avoid global warming growing over 1.5°C. After that, a further 0.5°C would have devastating consequences. Sea level rises would affect 10 million people, 99% of coral would be destroyed and many insects would be wiped out. The current level of commitments, which are not even being honoured, would still mean a rise in temperature of 3°C. In fact, given what is actually happening, we are heading towards a 4°C to 5°C increase in temperature, which will make large parts of the Earth uninhabitable. That is why young people have taken the lead. More than 300 cities have seen strikes by schoolchildren, while hundreds of thousands have come out on the streets in Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, Germany and elsewhere.

I note that 15 March has been named as the date for a global school student strike action. School students in Ireland will, hopefully, join that in large numbers. The contrast of those young people with the inaction of the world's leaders could not be starker. The contrast is stark not only with climate change deniers like Trump, but with those like the Taoiseach, who acknowledge that climate change exists and the role of human society in it but who do not want to do anything about it. As a result, Ireland is the second worst in the EU at meeting climate change targets. According to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, today, Ireland is third worst in the EU at meeting renewable energy targets. The reason for this inaction is clear. Establishment politicians represent big business, including the 90 corporations responsible for 63% of cumulative global emissions and the oil, gas and big agribusiness companies pursuing the maximisation of profit. A mass movement on climate change is needed and the school students should be joined by others, in particular the trade unions, to demand investment in green jobs and a centrally-based eco-socialist programme to take control of the economy out of the hands of the polluters and profiteers and to place it under the democratic control of the public to enable the rapid just transition we need.

I have two questions for the Taoiseach. First, will he listen to school students when they strike on 15 March? Second, given that transport is the second largest emitting sector of the economy, will he agree that radical action is needed to get people out of cars, that the State should invest in properly funded public transport services and, furthermore, should make public transport free, as has happened in Estonia, Luxembourg and 100 cities around the world?

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