Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There are other amendments and we would like to support their provisions.

The idea of identifying a climate crisis is correct, but we should also recognise the biodiversity breakdown. The two are inextricably connected. We support the suggestion of using the Citizens' Assembly as a mechanism to address the biodiversity crisis. We look forward to discussing the amendments with parties in advance of any vote.

Our own amendment is not intended to divide. I know there are different views on carbon tax. We did not bring it into this process; it came from the environmental community, environmental NGOs and the Climate Change Advisory Council, with which we engaged in our committee work. We know it is a divisive issue. We have sought to look at ways to introduce it which are socially progressive, demonstrably benefit those on lower incomes and protect people from fuel poverty. Our work in that regard is not finished. The report outlines that all parties are engaged in a further process. Before deciding on anything we are going to look at how it could be done in a way that signals the real cost of carbon while protecting those on lower incomes. That is not finished.

There are other aspects of the report which I think should be different. There is a glaring contrast between what we say about taking climate change seriously and a transport policy that is heading in the other direction. With our amendment we wanted to reflect what is happening in the UK Parliament, Wicklow County Council and other councils across the world, heed the words of Ms Greta Thunberg and recognise that we are in a climate crisis and an ecological breakdown crisis. We are not facing climate change but rather climate breakdown. We want to recognise that and our amendment sets that out.

In declaring such a crisis, we know that for the Oireachtas merely to "note" our report is political speak for not doing anything about it. We want to go further by accepting and endorsing the report. The work is not complete. The key project will be the Government's national energy and climate action plan. Our report will hopefully be a very useful pointer for that. Accepting and endorsing the report allows this House to tell the Government to be far more ambitious and to recognise that this is a crisis and everything has to change. I hope that other parties will see it in that light, not as a divisive mechanism but a reality which we must recognise and which requires a range of actions now.

This Oireachtas, the Seanad and the Dáil, has done some useful work in this report. It is important that we acknowledge, accept and endorse it. The process has been a proper one. Setting up the Citizens' Assembly to look at the climate issue was a Green Party initiative. That has served our country well by convening a representative sample of citizens, presenting the evidence and receiving their collective wisdom on what we need to do. Interestingly, that is one of the first asks of the Extinction Rebellion movement. That movement calls for a similar citizens' assembly. We should say to them that they must go further than that, as we have done. A citizens' assembly should be connected to the political system and the democratic institutions of the State in order to turn its recommendations into reality. That is what we have done in this report.

There are various aspects of the report which demonstrate why I think we should accept and endorse it. The first reason, which is not easy to explain and does not necessarily hold the front page, is that we must get our own institutional systems ready to make the change we need. We need a change in everything: in our land use system, our transport system, our energy system and our industrial system within two or three decades. We have learned from previous moments of change in this country that we do that best when there is common agreement on our goals and the scale and speed of the change we want to make. We do best when all the agencies of the State and other non-State agencies work together towards a common goal. We do best when the effort is outside the short-term switching on and off of the political cycle. We need the next three, four or five Governments to be determined that this is central to everything they do. When we work together on that common aim, we as a country can be really effective at making strategic changes.

I refer to the governance systems we put in place, such as the Oireachtas committee charged with overseeing what happens. A rule requiring a five-year budgeting process and real checks in the system to make sure that the Government is playing its part in the transition are really significant and important steps. The provisions for a just transition will be central. We are completely agreed that this green new deal has to deliver a just transition. Our own Just Transition (Worker and Community Environmental Rights) Bill 2018 would set up a specialist mediation service to work with Bord na Móna, workers at Moneypoint power station, the agricultural industry and local communities in places like Leitrim and Roscommon, where issues like new afforestation are causing real anger. That mediation service and the just transition system we recommend in this report are critical. These are institutional measures, but sometimes how the institutions of the State work is important. This report broadly gets it right.

The second really significant initiative in this report goes against the advice of Teagasc. It goes against what the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Michael Creed, and his Department say they want to do. We must insist on a new national land use plan. This land use plan is critical to protecting our biodiversity and restoring nature. We must start by looking at how we can reverse the tide and bring back pristine water conditions to help us develop soil health, which will bring back insect and bird life. We must completely, fundamentally and radically change our entire agricultural system, which is not serving Irish farmers at the present time. We must create a whole new model of forestry so that we create forests that store water and carbon and create a local environment that is a joy to walk through. It will take 50 or 100 years but that is what we must set out in a national land use plan. We must restore our peatlands, rather than scraping out the last bit of them and exporting it to the UK or burning it in a power station, which is the last thing we should do.

In a climate emergency we should be adopting the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development (Amendment) (Climate Emergency Measures) Bill 2018, which Deputy Bríd Smith has brought before us. We cannot declare a climate emergency and then say in the next breath that we are going to allow offshore oil and gas exploration. We cannot declare a climate emergency and say in the next breath that we are going to bring in liquid natural gas, LNG, or fracked gas from the USA. We have to make fundamental and radical changes and we can do that as a country. We can power this country with renewable wind, solar, biomass and other local power sources. They will strengthen our country and bring wealth and prosperity to it in the future. This change will not come if we try to hold out against the divestment from fossil fuels that we need to make.

More than anything else we need change in the transport sector. We cannot continue with the current national development plan. It is not fit for purpose. It only delivers a third of the emission reductions we know we need to make in the next decade alone. We cannot continue with a situation in which 51 national road and motorway projects are being built or are about to be built while not a single public transport project is ready to go. We should accept and endorse this report because it puts the move towards active travel first and foremost as a way as improving health and air quality as well as tackling climate change. We need to tackle the core underlying problems with our current economic model and move to a circular economy. That should involve immediately adopting the Waste Reduction Bill 2017, which we have been fighting to pass for the last three years, against the intentions of this Government. That all needs to change.

We can bring about change in a political environment in which we work together. This report, the work we have done and the work we are going to do by the end of this year is of critical importance. In my mind it is the most important thing this Oireachtas is doing. Ultimately I believe the Irish people are ready to make the leap. The Irish people are going to be good at showing leadership on this transition. We will play our part. We need the Government to help but it must also start from the bottom up. Local communities must be asked for their help rather than being told what to do. There must be genuine open dialogue as to what the options are in every local area. We in the political system all know that the Irish people are ready to do this. There has been a sea change in the last six months. Let us give the people a signal and a sense of hope. Yes, there is a climate emergency, but by accepting and endorsing this report we are ready to make a leap. This country will be a leader if we start the work together today.

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