John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Deputy O'Dea, on bringing forward this motion with other colleagues. Some points have already been made but I will make a general point. Along with the Minister of State, we are all familiar with the fact that in recent years there has been much talk about the need for the Government and individual citizens to make changes to assist Ireland in delivering its climate action obligations. We see efforts made at an individual and household level as well as at a community, national and international level. Both individuals and large corporations are adopting new policies and strategies so they can make their contribution in reducing their carbon footprint while diversifying and innovating into other materials. This enables people to carry on doing what they have done but in an environmentally sensitive way.

Concrete and cement form a very interesting topic to some. There was a very interesting article recently in one of the United Kingdom newspapers about cement, which is the second most used substance in the world after water. It is highly carbon intensive. Every three years since 2003 China has used more cement than the United States did in the entire 20th century. This is an incredibly carbon-rich compound.

There have been a few examples in the media recently of companies that have traditionally been in a heavily carbonised industry. Tyre manufacturers are an example. We know that locally and nationally there are issues, specifically on bonfire night, with the burning or illegal dumping of tyres. One of the market leaders in the manufacturing of tyres has established a leasing system whereby a person does not buy tyres. A person leases them from a company, and when they reach end of life, they can be returned to the company. There is a contract and this ensures the tyres can either be remoulded or recycled but they are certainly not dumped and they do not end up in the ocean. If that company, Michelin, is capable of doing such things in a toxic industry, other companies should be able to do it too. I heard on the radio this morning that Kingspan, one of our great companies, is hoping to recycle a billion plastic bottles and turn the particles from them into insulation material so that our homes, in the not too distant future could be insulated by completely recycled material that would otherwise go into the ground.

What is the connection between those companies and cement? If companies are able to make a shift in what they do and can still carry on the business they are in, innovations in earthworks, cement and quarrying must be considered as well. As Deputies O'Dea and Jack Chambers have said, some companies can carry on their business in a legitimate way and we hope to make progress with them and help them innovate with some of their products. If others are sticking up their fingers to the Government, wider officialdom and the legal system in carrying out their works without any regard to the law and, more important, the country's climate action obligations, this must be dealt with through the full force of the law, as Deputy O'Dea noted.

It is very hard for people to figure out how this happens. Most of us know of quarries at some location in our constituencies and there are one or two in the rural part of mine. How these can be missed from an enforcement or legal perspective is beyond me. This motion is setting its face against the illegal quarrying work that is going on and it is stressing the environmental impact of these quarries and incinerators. It is putting it up to the Government to formulate a policy once and for all to ensure that national regulatory agencies get whatever powers they need. There must be enforcement. The idea that a company can have a soft route through judicial review or appeal and escape the hands of the law with impunity must end once and for all.

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