Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Sherlock, for sharing time. As someone who previously held the Minister's portfolio as well as a number of others - it was three ministries in one according to this Government - and who brought in the legislation on climate change and participated in the adoption of the COP21 agreement in December 2015 and signed it in the UN a few months later, I wish to raise a few issues that are of importance to me. They are, even though some of them relate to my county, of national interest.

The first relates to the Silvermines hydroelectric plant, of which the Minister is well aware. It is a very important project and has huge significance for our future energy requirements. We have pushed for the project for a number of years and the Government is supportive of it. The project just needs to fit within the Government's policies. We already have European Union designation for it and the support of the Tánaiste and so many other people across the Government. It was disappointing, however, not to see it up in lights as regards Government strategy. I hope it will be repositioned because it must be there as part of the mix of future energy requirements. Given the extent to which we will be dependent on wind energy in the future, such a project, which will recycle wind energy through the use of a pumped storage system on the site of a disused mine, is incredibly important. Given the amount of power it will provide to us, the Minister will really have to refocus his efforts on it, and I implore him to do so. This €650 million project can be funded predominantly from outside the State as long as the State is willing to support it. The Minister needs to prioritise this.

The second matter to which I wish to refer relates to what has been described as "the IFSC of the bioeconomy", namely, Lisheen mine. I am on the board of this project and have been on the project team for six years or so. It was a great day when the bioeconomy status of Lisheen was confirmed, and a significant level of investment is going into the project. We need the Minister's help with one or two issues. The big one is to get a gas pipeline connection to the site. This would dramatically change the capacity to bring even more industries onto the site. We already have Glanbia and a number of others. I ask the Minister to consider this.

I also implore the Minister to look at the issue of community wind farms. He has committed to putting the community pot in the renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, auction. Templederry wind farm, which is located close to where I live, is probably the only community-led wind farm in the country. We can understand why there are not more of them, given the length of time it has taken the community to be able to sell the wind farm's electricity onto the grid. I therefore ask the Minister to allow for a provision within the pot, the matrix, to enable such wind farms to contribute. The amount of revenue they will contribute to their local economies is way above what mass-scale wind farms would contribute, and I believe the community-led model is a far better way of doing things.

I was delighted to see the provision of plastics recycling technologies developing in consumer areas in recent days. The Minister was with me when I helped bring Sabrina Manufacturing Group to Tipperary to start a plastics recycling plant there. He came down after I facilitated the group's entry into Ireland and the plant's location. The plant replaced the jobs that had been lost in Bord na Móna. These technologies are incredibly important. Sometimes I wonder whether we embrace them quickly enough and whether we work with partners outside the State to bring in these technologies quickly enough to get to the level of recycling we need. There are a huge number of other very exciting technologies which, dare I say, I did not have enough time to get through when I was sitting in the Minister's seat, but they are out there and we can and should embrace them.

The scale of retrofitting we are carrying out, as proposed in the Minister's policies, must be multiplied by hundreds. It will save the State in the long term in respect of both public and private housing, and we really need to redouble our efforts there. What is put out there is not ambitious enough.

My final point concerns education. As the father of two children who are always re-educating me and my parents - their grandparents - on environmental issues, such as recycling and so on, I am of the view that we really need to look at the school curriculum when it comes to such issues. We need to lead by example and ensure that we can get our educational institutions, particularly primary and secondary schools, carbon-neutral as quickly as possible and then move on to other educational facilities.

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