Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I confirm that the Government supports a just transition on climate change. I am not sure it is exactly the model that Deputy Howlin supports but the Government absolutely supports the principles of just transition. We anticipate that the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, will bring forward the all-of-Government climate cation plan in May. I agree with Deputy Howlin's broad assessment regarding the politics of climate change and I have previously commented on that in this House.

I do not think it is quite the case that the populist, far-right Finns Party surged. It got a similar share of the vote as it got in the elections five years ago. In many ways, the election was a draw because the Social Democrats won 40 seats, the mainstream, centre-right party - Fine Gael's sister party - won 38 seat and the Finns Party won 39.

The politics of climate action are difficult as we saw in France, where climate action kicked off the yellow vest protests. A Government lost office in Australia because it was taking climate action. There have been difficulties in Canada where the Government has taken climate action. As is often the case, everyone agrees about the need to take climate action but the fact that it requires changes in lifestyle, can increase costs and have impacts on people can make it difficult. It is used by populist parties to make themselves more popular, to create fantasies about elites and all those matters to which Deputy Howlin referred. In most of the world, that is the populism of the right; in Ireland, it is the populism of the left - not the Labour Party, but Sinn Féin, Solidarity-People Before Profit and others, the parties that could not sign up to the cross-party climate action plan because it might cost them votes or they might lose out on the opportunity to exploit an issue for the sake of populism.

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