Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will.

A year ago, as Members know, the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development (Amendment) (Climate Emergency Measures) Bill 2018 passed Second Stage in the House by a big margin of 78 to 48. In reality, given that we are in a climate emergency, this Bill should have been law by now. We should have been joining a historic group of countries such as Costa Rica, France, Belize and New Zealand, which, instead of being laggards when it comes to climate change, are world leaders because they did what this Bill sets out to do in its beautiful simplicity, namely to keep all fossil fuels in the ground.

I thank the Green Party for allowing us to take this motion tonight because we swapped Private Members' time with it. This is the second time we have used Private Members' time to attempt to pass this Bill. I would love to use this time to deal with the housing or health crises or issues of inequality all over this country, but, through a spirit of meanness, the Fine Gael party insisted that we use Private Members' time to move a simple motion that basically asks the Government to stop strangling this Bill and to get it out of the hostage hold that the committee has on it because it is the victim of an unprecedented procedural wrangle that has never happened to legislation previously.

We are using our Private Members' time to try to get it out of this wrangle but I have to ask why that is. Why are we so insistent on putting Members through a painful, repetitive and blatantly discriminatory wrangle of dragging us through and using Private Members' time yet again to get this Bill out of limbo? The reason we are doing it is that this Government and the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly's, party is held hostage by the fossil fuel industry. The industry's record of lobbying the Government's Ministers, Senators and Deputies is second to none. A recently retired adviser to the Taoiseach is now leading the lobbying in these Chambers and in the corridors of power on behalf of the industry. It is no secret that he is leading that lobbying but is it not outrageous that the Government, Fine Gael and the Independents on the Government's benches would listen to him and the interests of those who make vast profits from oil, gas and coal, rather than listen to the tens of thousands of children who took strike action across this country less than two weeks ago? These are the children whom the Minister, Deputy Bruton and the chairman of the committee, Deputy Naughton, stood smiling at, patronising and telling them how wonderful they were while, at the same time, the Government is blocking the exact thing that the children want it to do, namely to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Their slogan was: "We need system change not climate change! Keep it in the ground."

What I found interesting coming back here was that a year later I had to ask myself what had happened in that year with all the licences issued for fossil fuel exploration. When one looks at the record online, in the final six months of last year, a total of 12 exploration licences were issued, covering more than 15,000 sq. km offshore which belongs to the people of Ireland. Some 15,000 sq. km has been practically privatised and given away to the oil industry to explore and to exploit. Who are they? Who are the faces who are using the lobbying privileges in Dáil Éireann for their benefit? Exxon Mobil is one. It is facing losing its lobbying privileges in the European Parliament because its representatives failed to turn up for the first hearing on climate change. Exxon Mobil is a climate denier and, interestingly, it supported the property tax. This oil giant publicly supported the Paris agreement but has drawn the ire of scientists, academics and environmentalists because of its climate obfuscation and it is one of the companies that has been given a licence. Another one, interestingly, is Nexen Petroleum, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese national offshore oil company.

The Minister of State will reply that if this Bill is passed, energy security for the people is not guaranteed. I know that because Fine Gael repeatedly says that but the Government has no problem doing deals with Russian and Chinese owned companies to exploit the resources in Irish waters on behalf of private companies. This is all apparently done with Fine Gael's vision of how to stop climate change. I appeal to the Minister of State and to the Government to listen to the kids. They get it; the Government does not.

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