Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this debate. I thank the Minister for being present throughout all three and a half hours of this debate, a portion of which I chaired. It has been very enlightening to listen to Members on all sides of the House talking about the importance of this issue. I am very fortunate to have been appointed to the committee which will look at the forthcoming Bill which is being worked on. I very much welcome the remarks of the incoming Chairman of the committee, Deputy Leddin, particularly his reference to the need for all of us to draw on all traditions in the House for good ideas. As he said, no party has a monopoly on good ideas when it comes to the environment.

There are a number of areas where the work of the previous committee and the previous Government in putting forward a comprehensive report on climate action and a climate action plan should be recognised. I refer in particular to the need to pay very careful attention to those who are less well-off. I echo the comments made by Deputy O'Donoghue about those we will miss, namely the individuals who cannot afford to invest in the level of improvements to their property which would lessen their carbon footprint and their heating bills. That of course refers to older people and people in receipt of the State pension, among others, who reside in their own private dwellings or local authority stock. There are schemes in place to assist, but sometimes a person is given a certain amount and cannot match it or come up with the initial sum required. That is an area we need to look at in the climate action Bill, when it comes before the Houses in the next few weeks or months, and in any future plans we have.

My constituency colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, covered some of the issues in our constituency quite comprehensively. I will not repeat them except to say that climate change has led to very significant flooding in some coastal environments in the constituency. This has particularly affected Portrane but also places like Rush. While the local authority and the Government have stepped in, they have done so very late, such that we have already lost one property and we are about to lose another. The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is aware of this. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is very much aware of it given that it is his constituency. While we may have all the best will in the world when it comes to implementing proposals, sometimes we are very slow to come to the table and produce them. We have EU obligations to adhere to, as well as domestic legislation and proposals. It has been five or six years since the first of four Ministers with responsibility for the OPW visited Portrane beach. I was there on each occasion but it is only now that we are engaged in the public consultation process to implement something. While interim measures have been put in place, as Deputy Duncan Smith mentioned, five years have passed.

Deputy Smith also mentioned a number of areas which are very close to my heart and this includes public transport in northern Dublin. During Fine Gael's first term in office of the current sequence, the then Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, who is now the Tánaiste, opened the Luas interconnector. Many other projects must happen in order to take people out of their cars but BusConnects and Metro North, of which I know the Minister is very much aware, are projects I will be vigorously pursuing as far as the commitments in the programme for Government are concerned.

There are a number of other areas I wish to touch upon. The Minister mentioned some of them in his opening statement, which I was very pleased to hear. I refer in particular to land usage. This is not just about agriculture but also about the development of land and the impact that can have on our environment. I worked on several development plans as a county councillor prior to becoming a Member of this House. It is important that we recognise and perhaps upskill not just members of local authorities but also the staff of the local authorities about planning and what is appropriate to put into development land, particularly as we have so much of it in the north of the county.

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The other issue I want to mention is that I am a firm believer in our afforestation programme but we need to be more ambitious. I would like to see more community groups engaged in this through local authorities or the Department. I would also like to see more indigenous trees forming part of the afforestation programme. We have huge swathes of pine and other trees in the country and it would be advantageous in the long term for us to look at particular native species.

I have already touched on housing standards. It is fantastic that the standard is now so high but I echo Deputy O'Donoghue's comments on the less well-off who are not in a position to upgrade their properties for climate change and carbon emissions.

I echo Deputy Leddin's hope that the committee of all parties will be able to go through the Bill when it is presented to us and vigorously assess how effective it will be in implementing the plans that are there and amending plans, if needs be, on the part of the State. I very much look forward to this and I thank the Minister for his time this evening.

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