Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. Tá súil agam go bhfuil sé go maith. Obviously, climate change is very real and we have seen ten of the warmest years on record happen since 1998. We have seen the CO2 of hundreds of millions of years of organic growth stored in the ground literally being put into the environment in the space of approximately 100 years, radically changing the chemistry of the environment. We are also at a time of mass extinction where hundreds of thousands of acres of our oceans are floating plastic islands. As a generation, we must probably be the dirtiest in the history of the planet.

Every time we discuss the issue of climate action in this Chamber, it is riven with contradictions in so many ways. The previous Governments, the Fianna Fáil Government and the two Fine Gael Governments, literally swam in greenwashed statements, press statements, photo opportunities, brochures and occasions to show off their green credentials. However, never have I seen Governments do so little as regards an aspect they talked about so much. One of the biggest threats to this issue is all the talk and no action of a political system that is phenomenally cynical. People are looking to virtue signal on this issue and yet we see precious little action on the environment. If anything is to happen, first and foremost, this Dáil must mean what says and do what it means.

I want to mention the media on this particular issue. When it is questioning politicians the media obviously needs a bit of fire and a bit of heat. There is nothing better to achieve that heat and fire than to put a politician in an awkward situation. However, every time the environment is discussed by the media they always focus on the really difficult issues. If one focuses on the difficult issues all the time, very quickly one will turn people off the idea of taking action on this really important issue. Of course, all this is not going to be easy and serious effort will be needed. There is, however, a phenomenal level of low-hanging fruit when it comes to the environment. There is a phenomenal number of opportunities to make real, positive change in our society and tackle the environment as well. This budget definitely offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where the needs of the environment and of the economy intersect in an investment stimulus that can start to focus on radically changing the way this country operates into the future.

What I mean by low-hanging fruit and the easy and positive things that should have been done years ago are things like the deep retrofit of homes.

In 2011, I introduced a detailed document on how we could in five years deep retrofit all the homes in the State that needed it, and it happened at the same time as an enormous crash when we needed to keep people in the construction industry. Obviously, it was never actioned in any way at all. The Government at the time, of course, put a few bob into retrofitting so that it could claim that a number of houses were being retrofitted every year. However, it has only scratched the surface of the housing stock - the public building stock and the commercial building stock - in the country. Obviously, deep retrofitting has the benefit of saving fuel, making the inhabitants more comfortable and saving significant amounts of money. One of the first things we need to do is spend radically on that element in coming years.

One country in the EU has no microgenerated electricity connected to the national grid. What country is that? Pat Rabbitte, if anybody remembers him, spoke about microgeneration to beat the band a number of years ago and still we have none. Obviously, I welcome the Minister's mentioning that the auction has led to approximately 80 projects. Despite all the talk we have had so far, not one project is plugged in yet and it may even take two years for that to happen. Microgeneration represents a real opportunity.

Farmers are hammered owing to low incomes, but they are ideally placed to produce electricity as a crop either through small-scale wind, solar or bio-digestion. We could easily allow for farmers to increase their incomes by €3,000, €4,000, €5,000 or €6,000 a year through microgeneration. That would allow us to substitute out fossil fuel imports that are coming from dictator-type countries. It would benefit our balance of payments, benefit farmers' incomes and benefit world politics, but it still has not happened. Even the auction system that was used previously does not allow for small-scale community facilities to get involved in that process, and I hope that can be allowed in the future.

Much of the green energy production that has happened so far has happened in large-scale, international vulture fund-type companies which have come in to build industrial-size turbines right up against people's houses. If one were to design a solution to turn people off energy, it would not be possible to select a better way than by doing that.

Public transport is another logical way to reduce our fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions radically, and yet public transport has been the poor relation of transport for the past two Governments. On several occasions I have spoken in this Chamber about simple projects like the rail line to Navan. Meath has the largest number of commuters in the country. It is the only county in the country where the majority of workers leave that county every day to go to work. No other local authority has that experience. Navan is the largest town in the country without a rail line and yet no Government so far has shown a jot of interest in it. We may have a review in the future of some kind of potential for a feasibility study. It goes back to the cynicism people have of process and talk without any action.

The Minister spoke about regional development. This country is turning into a city state. London is considered a major outlier in British terms regarding the economic activity happening in London compared with the rest of Britain, but Dublin's overgrowth in comparison with the rest of the State puts it in the ha’penny place. We have an overheating city with a sprawling commuter belt that extends to a third of the country. People are commuting from Munster, Connacht and Ulster into Dublin and we have an emptying rural sector after that. This crisis provides an opportunity to reverse the lopsided development that has happened. That change will not happen under current Government plans.

Cycling and walking are simple things. I have been cycling from Castleknock into Leinster House for ten years. I have been on the quays and seen mothers with two- or three-year-old children on the seats on the back of their bicycles fighting for spaces with trucks and buses. We appear to be designing road space to scare people away from making the transition to bicycles.

Farmers should be the guardians of the habitats that help for biodiversity and carbon sink. It is incredible that in applications to the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine for the single farm payment, farmers are required to exclude from any calculations land that is not in use, in other words bogs, wetlands and scrub. It is absolutely bonkers to use language about more biodiversity, but action going in the opposite direction. Any talk about climate change must take into consideration that the Government took an ideological decision to allow beef to be imported into this country from South America through the Mercosur deal. This means that vast swathes of Amazon forest will be felled to allow beef produced at a lower quality and in a less environmentally friendly manner to be transported thousands to miles to Ireland to displace Irish beef. It is not possible to run with that policy while claiming to be in favour of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

It is important that we bring people with us. Sometimes if we find that people may be changing their minds or resisting a particular policy, the Government or the system can come down heavy on them. Some of the Covid restrictions we have seen do not bring people with us. They actually seek to force people to come in a particular direction. I will give two examples of not bringing people with us. One is the outsize industrial wind turbines that are on land. We need to go offshore for our wind energy generation in the future. The North-South interconnector is another example of infrastructure that annoys people. It makes people furious because they are losing the quality of their living environment, the quality of their homes, and the value of their farms, businesses and homes. There is no greater way to turn people against the Government than by building more than 400 monstrous pylons right up against people's homes. That is the catalyst that causes resistance.

I ask the Minister to ensure that the plan for the North-South interconnector, which I support because I support an all-Ireland energy market, is undergrounded. I will introduce a Bill to the Chamber to underground the North-South interconnector. The Fianna Fáil website states that it wants to see it undergrounded. Sinn Féin also claim it wants it undergrounded, but the Executive in the North has just given planning approval for it there. We need to be able to end cynicism on these issues. There needs to be a sympathy between the language we use on these topics and the actions we take in this Chamber. That Bill on the North-South interconnector will allow for political parties to ensure they mean what they say. That North-South interconnector would have been built ten years ago if the Government at the time had the cop-on to listen to the people in the constituencies and had undergrounded it.

I went to Belgium to look at its network for transmitting electricity. It uses the consent of the people as a central aspect to planning and development in its system. That country is reducing the level of electricity transmitted on pylons because it is microgenerating it locally where it is used locally.

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