Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will not repeat the horrific descriptions we have just heard from around the Chamber about what is happening. I want to raise a number of things, however. I emphasise the importance of tomorrow. I am delighted that the Dublin Council of Trade Unions is supporting the march and calling on its members to join it and also that many communities will be mobilising alongside the students. Indeed, across the world strike action will be taken by longshore workers in San Francisco and dockers in Australia. They will be striking for two hours. That is a powerful message to our governments to do something.

The Minister and I have been crossing paths quite a bit over the obstruction by his Government of the Climate Emergency Measures Bill 2018. We disagree entirely on a number of issues and in particular on the question of gas as a clean transition fuel. I want to raise the alarm concerning this issue for everybody in the country. Within the next week or two, the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste will be going to Europe to represent Ireland and endorse the projects of common interest being put before the European Union. One of those projects of common interest that we are about to endorse is a deal struck between Donald Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker to locate at least 13 shale gas sites across the European Union. Three of them might be coming to Ireland.

In case people are not familiar with the description "shale gas", the term we use is liquefied natural gas, LNG. The Minister will know that liquefied natural gas is the very same as fracked gas. The only difference is that it is coming from North America, the location from where most shale gas is transported around the world. The impact of shale gas is environmentally shocking. Shale gas does not yield as much CO2 as other types of gas or oil. It does, however, give off a huge amount of methane and methane is the second most important greenhouse gas, after carbon dioxide. Its global warming potential is absolutely massive. It has an impact for more than 20 years that is 787 times greater than CO2. We can see from the latest peer-reviewed science, however, that one third of all shale gas across the globe comes from North America. It is contributing to a huge rise in emissions. Interestingly, however, if we reduce methane production and emissions the climate responds much more rapidly than to a reduction in CO2.

Here is the issue for the Minister. Will he and his Government refuse to sign up to the projects of common interest which include shale gas being transported from North America to the shores of the European Union on the scale proposed? Will he do something meaningful for the tens of thousands of school students, workers and community activists who will throng the streets tomorrow and again and again after that? From 8 October, Extinction Rebellion actions will take place for a whole week across this city as well as Cork and Galway. Will the Minister send out a signal to show those people that he is serious about tackling climate change? Will he show them that he is not a laggard but a leader by ensuring that Ireland will refuse to sign up to the European Union deal done with Trump? That is the next big step we could take. The Minister and his Government have blocked the Climate Emergency Measures Bill 2018. He has been listening to lobbyists, whether from China, ExxonMobil or our own locally-grown fossil fuel industry. He has blocked the Bill undemocratically and he continues to do so. We will still be shouting at him tomorrow to keep it in the ground and allow that Climate Emergency Measures Bill 2018 to pass. The next most important thing he can do, however, is to refuse to buy into these projects of common interest.

As we speak, I have a motion circulating around all of the Deputies in this House asking them to sign the motion and call on the Minister and his Government not to buy into fracked gas from North America. How hypocritical can Fine Gael be? We ban fracking in our country but we import fracked gas from North America on a huge scale. That gas will sit in large methane emissions dumps that are really going to ratchet up the climate chaos we saw during the summer. I refer to the tragedies we saw everywhere from the Bahamas to Mozambique. The people in this world who suffer the most are not those causing the pollution. The people of the world who suffer the least, the 1%, are the real polluters. We can stand in their way, if the Minister will take a brave step and refuse to sign into that project.

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