Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I commend the Oireachtas and RTÉ on last week's Youth Assembly on climate action. There was some disappointment that RTÉ would not facilitate the participation of young people from the North, but it was an important event and the people who participated so fully did their communities proud. As the Taoiseach knows, the challenge of climate change is unlike anything we have faced before. As a small, wealthy and developed country in a union of 27 other wealthy countries, we have to act and think big in respect of this matter. The climate action plan is praiseworthy. Incorporating a quarterly review regarding its implementation is good practice but it is on the acknowledgement of the scale of the change and the integrity of the ambition that our children and grandchildren will judge us. The Government has indicated that it is phasing out oil exploration in Irish waters, yet we are bringing fracked gas from the US to Ireland. This smacks a little of hypocrisy. Many of the Government's listed achievements relate to low-hanging fruit such as new energy requirements and regulations for homes that have yet to be built, increased carbon taxes that have not changed behaviour and that will impoverish working families and a borderline obsession with electric vehicles. The reality is most people cannot afford electric vehicles because they are way too expensive. There needs to be a major review of how the initiative in this regard will work.

The Government is still viewing climate action through the prism of something for the individual to do rather than as a matter in respect of which society must take action. As my colleague, Deputy Cullinane, has stated, there is an assumption within this plan that small, individual actions alone will save the day. Earlier this month, the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, confirmed that the Government has no plans to expand the rail network outside the existing network, save for a paper review in respect of the western rail corridor. That review should have been carried out years ago. I have raised the western rail corridor several times with the Taoiseach. Will the Government reconsider the decision in this regard and look at rail again? The Taoiseach knows that rail has an important role to play in lowering carbon omissions. Similarly, the Government has refused to contemplate free public transport. It wants to keep people in cars while climate action demands that we get them onto public transport, particularly in urban areas, as quickly as possible.

See this speech in context