Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the House and, in particular, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action for the huge effort put into helping to develop this proposal. We are talking about massive change in our society. We have learned from other big changes we have managed to make in Ireland in recent years, such as the changes in our Constitution, that the first and most important element is to ensure there is an understanding of the issues and that we build on a broadly shared consensus or common ground about the importance of making change and why we are seeking to make it. That is why it was particularly important the Oireachtas first asked the Citizens' Assembly to assess this issue, and it was ambitious in the types of changes it put to us as policymakers in the Oireachtas. The Oireachtas committee took that on and put in many long hours of work and evaluation and hearing from witnesses to bring forward a really comprehensive report. We are now at the final stage where the Government is laying on top of that work an action plan that is committed to start this journey and achieve the targets we have set for ourselves.

It is important, in discussing why we are doing, that we do not become bogged down in targets and then find we are off course and the bad boys in the class. This is really about ourselves. This is about us making a decision that we want our society to be resilient in the face of a perilous menace that is coming in our direction. Global warming is having a massive impact on the globe and on our society. We have seen that in a tangible way. The world will have to react and change the way we do things. The choice for Irish people is whether we want to be ahead of that change so that we are resilient in the face of the types of the policy changes and impacts this will bring. It is important to think in those terms. The successful farm in 2030, 2040 and 2050 will be the one that has made decisions that are appropriate now in order for it to be competitive in an environment when there will be increasingly more emphasis on the environmental sourcing of products and so on. The successful enterprise will be the one that has recognised it can do things in smarter ways and it can be a part of the new technologies that will transform the world in a decarbonised economy. The successful home will be the one that has anticipated this and is making sure that the building fabric used, the heating systems installed, and the way in which the family members conduct their travel and other day-to-day activities are resilient in the face of these changes that are coming in our direction. It is important for Irish people to see it in that sense, namely, that this something about us not only being responsible in a global sense, which is important, but future proofing our own activities and making sure we can pass on the globe and our country to the next generation in a better state, more resilient in the face of what is a clear change.

What we have done in this plan is to seek to pick the items that are the most sensible thing to do on a pathway ultimately to achieving the ambition of net zero carbon by 2050. That is a major challenge but it must be bitten off in chunks. What we have done is identified the technologies. It is the first time we have had a comprehensive look at what are the technologies that, at least burden for the Irish people, can deliver the changes we need and that create the most opportunity. That is why there is a shift in this plan, for example, towards taking on more electric vehicles. That is a technology that is not only fast improving but it will be cheaper in the long term for the people who make those decisions. Similarly, with decisions to retrofit, the decision to change the fabric of one's home or to change the heating system in turn will prove to be the correct ones to have made. It is important to see it in that light.

I am also conscious that a number of Deputies and commentators had said this is too big a burden for people to contemplate. There is a risk of over-stating the scale of the burden. Ultimately, three quarters of what we are asking people to do would be the right things to do even if there was no climate crisis.

These are about doing things in our lives, whether it be the way we handle waste, how we plan our travel or how we heat our home, which would make absolute sense even if there was not a looming climate crisis, but in the face of a climate crisis make dramatically more sense.

The other aspect is the scale. This is a gradual pathway. Many have talked of the thought of 500,000 home retrofits as a big step up. It is a step up. We are only doing a little over 30,000 per year at present. We need to get up to 50,000. On the other hand, at the end of the period, we will have retrofitted approximately 30% of existing houses. This should not be seen as an obligation being imposed on people suddenly. This is a pathway that we need to take together and we, as a Government, have to seek to make that as easy as possible for people, knowing that we cannot pay for it all but still making the changes. That is why it is so important that we rethink the way in which we deliver retrofits. Deputy Dooley recognises the value of moving away from the one-off model that we now have to aggregating and scaling up. Doing things in a more aggregated way, one can get better value for money, one can give people access to information in a more co-ordinated way, one can develop smart finance to underpin it and one can develop easier pay mechanisms. One can do many things that make that journey easier for people, and we recognise that. However, one must also have a target. One must recognise that things need to be done and we cannot wait and hope they will be done. We must have accountability.

The same is true in the electric vehicle area. People have balked at the idea, with 2.7 million vehicles now on the road, that by 2030 we would have somewhat over one third of the vehicles as electric or plug-in hybrid electrical vehicles. One must bear in mind that every year we freshly license 280,000 vehicles. Over the coming decade, we will be freshly licensing more than 3 million in this country and we need to make sure that 1 million of those are electric vehicles in order to deliver our objective. That is also a challenge but the Members will see that, as the cost of batteries comes down and as the technology develops, this will be cost-effective.

It is important in undertaking this that we make sure that we keep our community together. There is a real risk that people start to pit rural areas versus urban areas or agriculture versus industry. If we allow that split to develop, we will signally fail to achieve what the younger generation is demanding of us. We must take careful steps to ensure rural areas have the supports. I come from a farming background and I have been on many trade missions. The future for Irish agriculture is in enhancing our credentials as sustainable providers of food. That is the direction for high-margin farming that will underpin family farm income into the future. We must help, through the CAP and other mechanisms, people to make the changes on their farms that Teagasc has outlined and that are well known so that they can sell Ireland as being that high-quality strong environmental agriculture. Similarly, we need to ensure that those who are most exposed or least equipped to manage this change are supported in that work and the significance of a just transition team advising Government and the implement group is really important.

Lastly, as time is limited, I believe the governance model, which was designed by the Oireachtas and which has been fully implemented in this plan, is absolutely the right approach. We must have accountability, not at a high level but in each sector. Each Minister with responsibility for sectors is looking just as much at how he or she stays within a carbon budget in his or her sector as how he or she stays within a financial budget. Of course, we are providing €30 billion to help build the infrastructure but it will take much more than that State investment to see the change realised. This accountability and the model that we used successfully in the Action Plan for Jobs of driving that accountability from the centre of Government, from the office of the Taoiseach, is really important to achieving our targets.

I thank so many people who have been a part of designing this strategy. It is a strategy that will continuously consult, adapt and change in the light of experience. This weekend, I will visit Cork where ordinary people will express their views now that the plan is out, although we held a great deal of consultation before we put it together. I hope that we can work together. In the same way as the Oireachtas committee has worked together, we can work together in implementing this plan and keeping our community together in working for something on which no doubt we will be judged on in ten, 15 or 20 years' time in terms of whether we realised those objectives and that when we faced them squarely in the eye, we were willing and able to make the changes to allow those targets to become a reality.

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