Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is a very tropical issue indeed. In respect of the new plan by the Government, the word "ambitious" is perhaps verbose in the circumstances. It is our view that the plan is less ambitious than the 42 recommendations of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action, which were made in March. The risks of failing to act are enormous when we consider future generations. We have 12 years left to reduce emissions drastically. If we do not achieve massive and rapid decarbonisation, we are facing climate breakdown with enormous consequences globally for failing to act. We all acknowledge this as a fact at this stage. There is unprecedented scientific consensus on the need to start reducing emissions by between 5% and 10% per annum starting now. However, this plan aims to reduce emissions by just 2% each year from 2021 to 2030 and then by 7% each year after 2030. The worry I have about the Government's plan is that if we kick these targets further down the road and fail to act today, we will miss the 2030 targets by a significant margin.

The plan delays action relative to what we said we would do in the joint committee. This delay is based on a red herring that new technologies will somehow emerge to reduce emissions. We already have the solutions we need; we need the political will and the policies to implement them. We brought in a lot of expertise in the joint committee and worked out how many of these solutions could best be implemented now. It is the view of the Labour Party that the Government's plan takes some of those actions and waters them down. The joint committee agreed that new climate legislation would be enacted by the Oireachtas in 2019 and that it would contain several crucial new governance structures, including emissions reduction targets for 2030 and 2050 and carbon budgets to map out the quantity of emissions allowable in each five-year period. The Government's plan now rolls back on the all-party recommendation and instead says it will publish legislation in March 2020.

This House has already declared a climate emergency. It could be late 2020 before the Government's legislation sees the light of day and is passed by the Oireachtas and another year will have passed.

The joint committee felt strongly that carbon budgets were an excellent way to plan for emissions reductions in a way that is transparent and accountable. We have been pushing for them but the Government's climate action plan departs considerably from the UK plan, on which we kicked the tyres, as it were, in the joint committee. Unlike the UK plan, on which the committee formulated its recommendations for planning and setting carbon budgets up to 2035, the Government plan allows carbon budgets to be changed every five years. The whole point of setting the budgets in law well in advance is to safeguard the process from short-term political horse trading. We need to make sure that carbon budgets are done properly when it comes to laying down the procedure in a new or amended climate Act.

On the role of the Climate Change Advisory Council, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action agreed that new functions and powers should be given to the climate council in line with the Citizens' Assembly recommendations. These should include greater capacity and a bigger budget to match the greater demands being placed on this important climate body. The Government's action plan, however, does not allocate the extra capacity or resources that are needed. We need to make sure we are doing things right. I hope this matter will be revisited.

On home energy retrofits, the new Government plan sets a target of upgrading 500,000 homes to a B energy rating by 2030. The joint committee's plan had already agreed to put the measures in place to deliver 800,000 deep energy retrofits by 2030. There is now a gap between the joint committee's ambitious recommendations and targets and the Government's targets. It is our view that the Government plan rows back significantly on what we agreed in March. Instead of showing an urgency to deliver home energy retrofits, it commits to a nominal increase in the existing national target as laid down in the national development plan.

There is huge unmet potential in Ireland for community-owned energy. Community energy is a way to collectively reduce energy demand and achieve renewable energy targets. It does this with local, social and economic benefits. It democratises energy generation and could go a long way towards helping to meet anticipated strong growth in energy demand in the period until 2030. Against all expectations, the Government plan does not do anything more to encourage and support community energy than what was already committed to under the renewable electricity support scheme, RESS. The timeline is no more than what is already required under existing EU targets. Again, we perceive a lack of ambition on the part of the Government plan. We need to remove the barriers to entry for community energy projects and have a ring-fenced pot for community energy in the first RESS auction. These recommendations were in the report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action but are not in the Government plan.

Peatlands restoration may offer a nature based solution to climate change. The joint committee proposed many actions on nature based solutions which are not reflected in this report. We need to use nature to capture carbon and keep it in the ground. This new plan refers to peatland re-wetting but does not contain any targets or specific measures. The joint committee did considerable work on this. The Labour Party sought targets to restore 200,000 ha of natural and cutover peatlands and 50,000 ha of industrially harvested peatlands by 2030. This is not an issue specifically for the line Minister, the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Josepha Madigan. We had some deliberation with the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Richard Bruton, on this matter yesterday. There must be a whole-of-Government response on this issue. We contend that resources must be provided to address the urgent need to start a major re-wetting programme to stop existing emissions from peatlands. This feeds into the just transition issue. While the proposal to establish a just transition review group under the auspices of the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, is welcome, we would also argue that the just transition task force must address or have the capability to address the issues that arise in the midlands.

On forestry, rather than the industrially managed monocultures of Sitka spruce, we need to shift to continuous cover forestry with a better mix of tree species. This type of forestry is far better at capturing carbon, is better for the environment and would provide more, higher value jobs in direct employment and in local industries. The Government plan relies heavily on forestry to soak away carbon but contains nothing about the sustainability and environmental performance of the forestry models to be used. This is a climate issue and needs to be treated as one.

The new plan refers to a climate action delivery board. There must to be further deliberations on this. I welcome the discussions we had with the Minister, Deputy Bruton, in the joint committee yesterday on how the climate action delivery board will work but it remains the view of the joint committee that, in buttressing the powers and resources of the Climate Change Advisory Council, one has an independent council that sits outside of the Government that can put smacht - or manners - on the Government of the day. It becomes an issue if too much of the plan depends on what is happening in the Government and through the individual Departmental silos. Without any proper oversight or real power vested in an independent council, I fear there would be slippage in the targets. Notwithstanding the presence of the Minister, Deputy Bruton, who sought to knock down many of the silos that exist within Government, having been in Government, I recognise that if individual line Departments are protecting their own briefs and edifices, I worry about the danger of the overarching policy or plan becoming bogged down in internecine and interdepartmental wars. For this reason, we need proper oversight of the plan to ensure carbon budgeting is nailed down and has a legislative base, with a statutory carrot and stick to ensure the plan gets delivered.

I would like to see greater dovetailing and interoperability between the plan and the recommendations of the joint committee. We must remember that the recommendations of the joint committee reflected the findings of the Citizens' Assembly. As such, the committee's report came directly from the people. Some work was needed to get 42 distinct and separate voices together to agree, by and large, a set of policies, principles and recommendations. This is why I am hopeful the Government and Minister of the day will lean more towards the report's recommendations because they are radical and take more of them on board as the plan moves through its iterative process.

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