Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will try to do it in five minutes.

With the most politeness I can muster, I have to say that the Minister has a brass neck. The response in the previous debate we had was to say to us, "Sure, you have no concrete proposals. You just want to get rid of capitalism. You've been banging on about that forever. You want socialism; of course, you do." He would say that, ignoring all the concrete proposals we made in our various speeches, such as free public transport, investment in low-carbon public housing, public investment in renewable energy and the transition to sustainable agriculture. The Minister then went on to do what has become the Government's traditional trick of agreeing to let the Bill on the just transition pass on Second Stage so it cannot be held to account for voting against it and then just let it sit there and not proceed while using the undemocratic veto the Government has of the money message.

That is precisely what the Government did when we introduced a concrete proposal passed by the Dáil to prevent further fossil fuel exploration. It claims we do not have concrete proposals. We do, and they have been passed by the House, but the Government is blocking them undemocratically.

I support the Bill. The concept of a just transition is key. The bottom line of a just transition is that no worker or small farmer should lose out as a result of transitioning to a zero-carbon economy. That means no loss of wages or jobs and no loss of income for small farmers. That requires an important role for the State to ensure that anybody whose current job no longer exists after such a transition is guaranteed alternative quality employment.

A series of graphs published in 2004 became famous in the 2000s. They outline in a very graphic way what was known as the great acceleration, the most rapid and pervasive stage in the human-environment relationship. They are in a range of issues, such as CO2, surface temperature, tropical forest loss, methane, ocean acidification, etc. They all basically show a hockey stick-shaped graph from 1945, shooting upwards as industrial fossil fuel capitalism post the Second World War took off and began to affect the environment in a substantial way. That is also the period that is increasingly accepted as the beginning of the Anthropocene, the geological age where human activity has had the dominant impact on the climate and our environment.

In 2015, the same authors of those great acceleration graphs did an update which showed that the process was accelerating even further. They also did an equity element of the graph which showed that not everybody in the world is contributing to the destruction of our planet. The very richest are contributing to it and the rest of us, working-class people and poor people, pay the price and suffer the consequences of it.

That is true on a country-by-country basis and within countries. The workers at Bord na Móna, coal miners, and oil and gas workers are not responsible for the crimes of the fossil fuel industry and the destruction of our planet as a result of its action. They are exploited by those companies and they lose out; in many cases, their health is badly affected. They are not just victims of those companies. They are potentially powerful allies in building a movement for the kinds of eco-socialist policies that are necessary to stop us reaching a climate catastrophe very soon. An alliance of workers, communities, young people, environmental activists, etc., is a very powerful force, an element of which we will see tomorrow on the streets.

During the summer, I visited the occupation by workers of Harland and Wolff, famously known for building ships. Ships burn a considerable volume of dirty oil. The increase in shipping in the world is a significant contributing factor to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Those workers were striking correctly to defend their jobs. As part of that, they raised the demand for the nationalisation of Harland and Wolff. They particularly advocated that the skills and machinery they have would be perfectly positioned to play a role in green energy through the construction of wind turbines. They explained that to us in particular.

It shows how workers can play a key role in the struggle and how the just transition brings together workers, communities and everybody affected. It is reminiscent of the Lucas plan from the 1970s in Britain where aerospace workers got together and fleshed out an alternative mode of production, not in the interests of the profits of their bosses but in the interests of society as a whole.

The same is true for the Bord na Móna workers whose skills are needed. We do not need to use them in other damaging production processes, as was suggested earlier. Instead they are needed above all in shifting to properly green energy. It has been estimated that at current prices the shift to green energy, particularly wind energy, will require €21 billion in investment. Going with that would be an enormous number of jobs with resources invested in that. That needs to be mobilised. It will not be mobilised by the private sector. It must be mobilised by the State stepping in. The ESB should step up. All those workers should have alternative employment. There is very necessary socially useful employment and those workers should be brought to the heart of a rapid just transition to a green economy.

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