Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was one of a number of Deputies who had the great pleasure to attend the climate strike student protest outside the Dáil two weeks ago. All of us who were there could not but have been impressed by the enormous energy and enthusiasm of the young people who organised the event. It featured some of the best placards I have ever seen at a political protest. There were also two very clear messages from all the young people who spoke from the platform. The first was a damning criticism of the Government and political system generally for their failure to act over decades to tackle this crisis. The second was a demand for action and for all of us to do what is necessary to start to get our emissions under control.

In case the Government is fed up of listening to the Opposition, it does not have to listen to the Opposition or protesting students to understand the depth of the difficulties we are in. A report from its own Climate Change Advisory Council last year had some pretty stinging criticisms of the Government's failure in this regard. Under key messages, the report, in the executive summary, states:

Ireland is completely off course in terms of achieving its 2020 and 2030 emissions reduction targets. Without urgent action that leads to tangible and substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, Ireland is unlikely to deliver on its national, EU and international obligations and will drift further from a pathway that is consistent with the transition to a low-carbon economy and society.

It further states: "Instead of achieved the required reduction of 1 million tonnes per year in carbon dioxide emissions, consistent with National Policy Position, Ireland is currently increasing its emissions at a rate of 2 million tonnes per year." Those are not the words of Karl Marx. This is not the work of an Opposition politician with which the Minister ideologically disagrees. The is the work of his own group of experts which is tasked with advising him on what action to take and it is telling him clearly that he is failing. For me, the following sentence from the report is crucial: "The Government has not provided a pathway for the decarbonisation of the economy and society by 2050." Any plan for the decarbonisation of the economy would start with a very simple premise, namely, that if we want to reduce emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, we must stop extracting them from the ground. That is a basic and simple proposition. For this reason, Sinn Féin is more than happy to support the legislation.

Notwithstanding the Minister's remarks on the deliberations of the joint committee, it seems remarkable that a Bill can pass by an overwhelming majority on Second Stage in this House and somehow be frustrated in committee. That tells us that the committee was originally constructed with a deliberately inbuilt Government majority, despite the Government not having a majority in this Chamber.

We support the Bill. I think its proposers would agree it is just one element of a much bigger approach that is needed from Government. I look forward to seeing the Government plan. The Government has lots of other plans in areas like health and housing and fails to honour the commitments in those, or indeed to fund them. What we need to see in the plan is ambitious, legally binding emissions reduction targets. They need to be enshrined in law so nobody can escape them and they need to cover all sectors, such as energy, transport and agriculture. They have to be supported by adequate investment in the first instance, as Deputy Stanley outlined, to provide people with the cleaner renewable energy alternatives that are necessary for them to be able to carry on with their lives. This is also to ensure that, as we make that transition, it is just for the workers who will be affected by it but also fair, particularly for low and middle income families who, unfortunately, on the basis of how the Government seems to be proceeding, are set to yet again pay the burden of Government inaction.

Last week, Sinn Féin launched a document which is another part of our contribution to this debate. It is a set of proposals on how to dramatically increase energy efficiency in the residential sector both through an expanded programme of retrofitting in private and public sector rental properties, but also to raise real concerns about whether the Government is even meeting its near-zero energy building requirements. Despite the fact there were targets for 2018 and 2020, it is not clear which Department is monitoring this. Despite the fact I have asked the Departments responsible for both climate action and housing who is checking to see if these targets are being met, both are telling us it is not them and to look elsewhere.

Obviously, many of us who are not on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment have not seen the full report and will wait to see that later. I sat on the Committee on Housing and Homelessness, which spent significant time deliberating on that issue and produced a report that the Government has singularly failed to implement. Even as a gesture of good faith, the Government should allow this Bill to proceed. It should stop frustrating it as it is frustrating other legislation through procedural complexities. It should allow us to progress a simple, sensible, practical alternative that will do what all of the young people who protested outside here two weeks ago want us to do, namely, keep fossil fuels in the ground, dramatically reduce our emissions and start taking serious action on climate change.

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