Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and wish him the best of luck in his role, which he has had now for a number of weeks. My comrades in Labour Youth produced over the summer a document, entitled Be Radical or Be Redundant, relating to a number of areas, including climate change. If we are to go from being laggards to leaders, as is the Government's aim, and one which we support, we need to be radical or else we risk being redundant.

Throughout this pandemic, which has dominated 2020 and dominated an awful lot of our thinking, anecdotal evidence has emerged from people, including I am sure everyone in this room, of the environment responding positively to the sudden pausing of regular industrial and indeed personal behaviours. If we are to take one positive memory from this year, I think it will be having a time to pause and to be able to see the environment around us, the biodiversity and the opportunities we have in our communities to improve the environment and to link that together with the State to make a real difference on climate change.

We have seen the disturbing and shocking images from California of the forest fires in recent weeks and the recent Australian bushfires, which ravaged the entire country and continent. In this country we have seen flooding regularly. In the week just gone, on the Continent several temperature records were set, some dating back 150 years. In my constituency we have issues such as coastal erosion, which over the past six or seven years has accelerated at an extraordinary pace.

This is not a once-off event. Coastal erosion has been happening for decades in north County Dublin at very modest levels. However, now we see the breadth and drama of it and the amount of land it is taking in such a short space of time. There is little doubt that this is a result of climate change. It is not just the California fires, the flooding in Europe, and the Australian bush fires. This is happening in every corner of the planet, including our very own.

Pandemic or not, we see the stark reminders every single day. Many of the world's Governments have reacted with rapid responses to Covid-19 and that is to be commended. We are all trying to flatten the curve. However, those rapid responses have never happened in relation to climate change. We know climate change is destroying homes, ruining livelihoods and killing people. It is another fight which we need to face collectively. It deserves action and a response to the scale of this global challenge. Climate change actions may bring certain practices and industries to an end or greatly reduce them but the future of our children and grandchildren is the goal we must aim for. It is the responsibility of world, international and local leaders to ensure climate action is used as a moment to bring a real green revolution. Workers and ordinary people will be the ones to deliver the green future but they cannot be the ones to carry the burden of delivering it. We must have radical and rapid action to save our planet and we must also have a just transition for our workers. We must act to save livelihoods, not only from the physical effects of climate change, but by ensuring a restructuring of our economy and creating well-paid public jobs with a publicly owned system of green energy production. At the heart of every climate decision should be workers, people and communities. We cannot allow the market to lead climate action and policy. It has no interest in it. It is not in the interest of the market to solve climate change. It is the exact opposite. The State has to lead and I hope that is a message the Minister believes and will carry in his term as Minister. The market and large industry have been the largest contributors to pollution and they must not hold continued influence over policy in Ireland or throughout the world. We must be radical or we face being redundant.

The Labour Party will support proposals to invest in the ESB, Coillte and Bord na Móna to create new sustainable jobs in clean energy, recycling and land management. This will ensure a positive future for workers and for regions of our country that are at risk of economic and social decline. We will support proposals for a just transition to a low-carbon economy and for setting up a just transition fund and task force to invest in businesses that are helping workers and communities to make that transition. We will support proposals to invest in public transport and cycling infrastructure; to encourage people in cities and large towns to make the change to sustainable and healthier forms of transportation; to ease traffic congestion; and to improve our air quality. That is why we need to see large-scale projects such as MetroLink, and I know the Minister is a supporter and advocate of that project and has been for many years. We need to see a radical expansion of public bike schemes into not just our major cities, but our big towns, and within our cities out to the suburbs to allow people to get to bus stops and train stations, where they are available, in a healthy and sustainable way. We need to see investment in infrastructure to make cycling safe. We also need to see investment in safe pedestrianisation and for people with disabilities. These measures from the bottom up in terms of our transport infrastructure will have a positive impact on climate change.

The Minister will not be short of ideas and solid proposals from the Opposition benches. Cynical people here will say that, as a Green Party Minister, he will receive more opposition from his own partners in Government in terms of policies and ideas than he will from people on this side of the House. We want to see action. We will be suggesting alternatives and we will support alternatives that will work because we need to be in this together. Climate action affects every one of us and the generations that follow will pay the price for our inaction now. There have been record-breaking floods, deadly heatwaves and billions of euro worth of crops destroyed by storms. People in Ireland are worried about what is happening in the world and what it will take to tackle the climate crisis before it is too late.

We call on the Minister and the Government in the promised climate action Bill to ensure the biggest polluters pay for the damage caused and that they are regulated to change practices; to ensure that the average worker does not bear the burden and brunt of the cost of climate change; that a real just transition for workers is delivered with a proper green new deal and a real investment in green energy; and that there is a ban on the use of fracked gas and oil. These are actions we must take. We have no time to dither on them. Each party in this House put forward proposals on climate action in its election manifesto. We need to start seeing them enacted. Last year we saw record-breaking demonstrations from people in the street in cities across the world. They were positive demonstrations and they energised people, not through local and general elections but through daily, weekly and ongoing political activity, be it under a party banner or not. We cannot sleepwalk into further destruction on this planet. We must be radical or we risk becoming redundant.

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